Customer Reviews

The Ride: A Shocking Murder and a Bereaved Father's Journey from Rage to Redemption

5 star:		(16)
4 star:		(3)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

A book not to be missed by those interested in American culture. Highly recommended.

For those who have lived in New England since 97, young Jeffrey Curley's murder brings back awful memories. "The Ride" recounts the details of his abduction and killing, but also informs the reader what has happened to the boy's father since. Bob Curley's journey from anger, hatred, and a quest for vengeance to a healthier place is inspired journalism and a tale well worth reading.

Thanks to the Curleys for participating and to writer MacQuarrie for his triumph.

It takes a talented writer indeed to shake us up about something we read or hear about every day... Well, maybe not EVERY day, but if we read any of the larger newspapers, watch world news on TV, or read online news sources, we know about such things as murder. And since we do read of such horror on a regular basis, we become insensitive to it.

This is why, when a writer of the caliber of MacQuarrie comes along, we are thrust suddenly out of our miasma onto the very scene of a crime that becomes so real for us that we are immediately shocked and outraged. NOW murder becomes personal. Now it raises the pulse. Now it gets our attention. We feel... we breathe in the same pain experienced by those close to the so-called "victim" (a word synonymous with anonymity).

Now we see, not a "victim," but a very real being with whom we can truly identify. And so we become incensed. Yet no matter the intensity of the pain, we cannot put the book down. We cannot simply "go home and feed the cat."

The solution to the intense discomfort we experience as we read THE RIDE is as surprising as the murder itself. Yet we know that it is the only personal solution for the owner of such pain.

What a bittersweet ride! Reading this book is like waking up to a whole new world; a world that is real and not just of our own making. It's brutal. It's like a rude, yet beneficial, awakening from a very long sleep. I highly recommend it!

Living in Massachusetts, I already knew some of the story of Jeffrey's abduction and his father's journey to reinstate the death penalty. I did not know of his personal demons and struggles that followed him throughout the decade after his son's shocking murder. The Curley family shows so much courage opening their lives for the world to read in this book. The author, Brian MacQuarrie, handles the family's journey very gently, yet tells the story in such a compelling manner. This is a heartbreaking story to read, but very eye-opening regarding the politics in Massachusetts and what must be done to help protect our children. I would have never expected Mr. Curley's life to be intertwined with that of the father of a victim of the Oklahoma City bombing, or with the Unabomber's brother. The story is very well written. I highly recommend this book.

Brian MacQuarrie executes a spot-on rendition of the Curley family in the paroxysms of soul-wrenching grief over the loss of a beloved youngest son, brother, grandson. This book is, however, not entirely what I was expecting. Within a handful of pages the Curley family is our family, they are our neighbors; Cambridge is our neighborhood. If there were such a thing to be had as a secret portal into the lives of this wounded family, MacQuarrie has wrangled, subdued and acquired it for us. The sort of intimate, tangled family details which might ordinarily cause us to avert our eyes are woven with such palpable genuineness by such a skilled observer of human behavior that we imagine we can see the emotions flick across the face of Jeffrey's father Bob through his more acute stages of grief and well into as what impels him forward on a mission that he thinks will salve his wounds.

Do we pause there for a breather? We do not. Here is yet another place the book parts company with the ordinary. Fueled by the rage and despair we now own as much as the Curleys and the Cambridge community, we enter the turbulent aftermath for years after Jeffrey's death. We follow Bob's tortured sojourn through deranged fantasies of retribution on into his encounters with high profile players with agendas on both sides of the capital punishment issue. We watch Jeffrey's mother Barbara and his brothers grapple with their grief and their anger at Bob as his bloodlust transmutes into something of a different complexion altogether.

This is not a gentle, soft-focus telling of the story. While it is compassionately, beautifully told, MacQuarrie shows the reader no more mercy than Jeffrey's murderers did Jeffrey as he spares us no details of the event itself. The frank way in which the family's foibles are laid bare serves to convince us of the authenticity of the story and the people portrayed within. As painful as it is to witness (firsthand, it feels) our own deepest fears actualized in someone else's family, we read on, wishing to clasp the Curleys to our collective bosom, offering whatever solace there is to be had for the loss of a child at the hands of murderers apparently less than human.

The Ride is not so much elegiac as redemptive, reforming. Regardless of your opinion on capital punishment, present or past, Mr. MacQuarrie guarantees you will not exit the book with the same opinion of humankind with which you began it. This is a book you must read. Once you pick it up, you will not put it down.

I give The Ride five stars. I am in the middle of reading it for the second time in two weeks. It's that good. It's an even better book than I expected, the stellar Kirkus review notwithstanding. Sad to say, it's a true story, with meticulously researched details and background settings woven into a book that I couldn't put down the first time I read it. An accomplished writer and seasoned newspaper veteran, Mr. MacQuarrie wastes no time in drawing us into a working class Boston neighborhood, introducing us to the Curley family members, and then to other characters who play greater or lesser roles in this compelling tapestry as the story unfolds. After the realization and details of a beloved child's senseless murder sink in, the question that many of us will have is: How do individual members of any family survive such a terrible event? What would any of us do in like circumstances? The answer to that last question will probably be different for all of us. It has been said that in every tragedy there is a lesson to be learned. As I read the book this second time, I hope to find an answer that makes sense to me.

This is truly a story that needed to be told and it is done so by an outstanding writer (MacQuarrie). He challenges us to feel what the subject (Bob Curley)is feeling throughout the entire read. I didn't want to put the book down. I wanted to keep on reading. I wanted to know what was going to happen in Bob's world next. As familiar as I felt I was with the original "story", I was blown away by the version I know now, because of this book.

During the reading, I was so conflicted with my own emotions about this man (Bob Curley) and the whole situation he finds himself in, after the traumatic events that took the life of his youngest child. The anger, the loss, the torment, the feelings of confusion, the trust of the politicians, the limelight he is thrust into, but then the basic compassion, the nonverbal outcry for assistance, and his attempt to find resolve within himself and the world around him.

I won't spoil the outcome, but it would be an honor to know such a man, in person. God bless you and your family Mr. Curley. Thank you and Mr. MacQuarrie for giving us the opportunity to read your ordeal.

If you read anything this year, read this book.

On October 1, 1997 ten year old Jeffrey Curley of Cambridge, Massachusetts took a ride with two adults, Salvatore Sicari and Charles Jaynes under the false pretense of receiving a new bicycle. He was brutally murdered after not accepting their sexual advances, then post-mortally raped, and stuffed into a plastic storage box. Then the container with his body in it was thrown off a bridge into the Great Works River in South Berwick, Maine.



The Ride is the story of that case, one which is familiar to many in the Massachusetts area. The book works its way from the grisly crime to the years afterward. It focuses on the family of Jeffrey, heavily weighted on the life of Cambridge Firefighter Bob Curley, Jeffrey's father. Briefly the book explains Bob Curley's need for vengeance was what kept him going in the dark months following his son's murder. He became a champion in the attempted legalization of the death penalty in Massachusetts. He spoke out at the State House, in the media, often confronting those opposing his beliefs. Years later, Bob meets the father of an Oklahoma City bombing victim and the brother of Ted Kaczynski, gentleman who opposed the death penalty. Through their shared experience, Bob Curley undergoes a remarkable transformation; he becomes an opponent of the very proposed law that he passionately fought for.



Brian MacQuarrie, a Pulitzer Prize Award nominee and Boston Globe writer does a fine detailed and astute job in reporting the facts regarding this case and the lingering affects it had on the Curley family. It is a no-holds barred account of the emotional ups and downs that occur over the years for the family, placing the reader into the edge of their painful abyss. One can not possibly fathom what it must be like to suffer such a tragedy and then turn the pain into such important work on causes the way Bob Curley did. Bob Curley's work on child safety and protection laws is currently on the books in Massachusetts.



Bob Curley's life as portrayed in The Ride is a study of breaking and redemption of human spirit. The rest of the Curley family was and remains shattered by Jeffrey's murder. There are no words that can be written that could convey this by author MacQuarrie. As a writer he handled this impossible task with skill and sensitivity. I recommend this book as an excellent, interesting read and a ride into heavy emotional traffic.

In "The Ride" Brian Macquarrie takes a detailed look at events and after effects of the murder of ten year old Jeffrey Curley. The author gives us a behind the scenes look at all the principal players in the murder itself. We learn about Jeffrey, his parents, the killers, the police and the painful details surrounding the little boy's murder back in 1997.

Most of the book, however, is about the struggle of the Curley family and Bob Curley, in particular, to continue with their lives in the aftermath of the murder.

Brian MacQuarrie provides all the grisly details surrounding Jeffrey Curley's death. Those passages in the book are among the most chilling pages I have ever read. After reading those pages describing the murder, I experienced my own sense of rage against the killers and against society for allowing such a murder.

After such a murder, however, life must go on ... and so does the book. We see how the violence of the murder plays out in the lives of all the people closest to Jeffrey over the next 10 years. Bob Curley becomes an ardent supporter in the struggle for the death penalty and then changes his viewpoint. The Curley brothers struggle with drugs. Barbara (Jeffrey's mother) plunges into a downward spiral. One child dies, but many, many lives are ruined.

I lived less than a block from Jeffrey Curley until 1996. I remember the days of October 1997 quite well. The book gave me insights into the lives of my Cambridge neighbors and hardened my stance against the death penalty.

Macquarrie writes an elegant redemptive story. With chapters titled "The Face of Evil" and "Resurrection", we are left with Bob Curley's heroic struggle to make sense of the tragedy of his son's murder. Macquarrie describes the many demons that Bob Curley must confront and slay in an attempt to restore normalcy to his life.

While I enjoyed reading this book, I have some doubts about Macquarrie's story. The book has a larger than life quality that we used to see in newspapers before stories were fact-checked. The book tells us the Cardinal Law attended Jeff Curley's funeral at Sacred Heart Church in Cambridge. I know this is mistake, because I attended the funeral and the Cardinal participated in the service only by sending his "representative" who spoke at the conclusion of the service.

It makes a better story, however, to have Cardinal Law in attendance at Jeff Curley funeral. As a reader, I am left wondering, about other occasions where the author may have stretched the facts a bit to make a better story. Thus, I can only give this book 4 stars because I have a suspicion that some key parts of this book may be fabricated.

It was an excellent book. Too much information about the legislature which got boring at times but other than that it was well written and very very sad. I am so glad his father made peace within himself and was able to move forward to some extent.

My brother-in-law Bob Curley and Brian Macquarrie writer have been working on this book for a long time. Bob Curley has been an inspiration to me. I will always remember "Jeffrey"
I am looking forward to reading the book. I just look at the cover and remember that day as it was yestrday.
Every parent should read this book. As never say it can't happen to you and your family. Because it Can.
Donna