On May 18, 1927, the small town of Bath, Michigan, was forever changed when Andrew Kehoe set off a cache of explosives concealed in the basement of the local school. Thirty-eight children and six adults were dead, among them Kehoe, who had literally blown himself to bits by setting off a dynamite charge in his car. The next day, on Kehoe's farm, what was left of his wife—burned beyond recognition after Kehoe set his property and buildings ablaze—was found tied to a handcart, her skull crushed. With seemingly endless stories of school violence and suicide bombers filling today's headlines, Bath Massacre serves as a reminder that terrorism and large-scale murder are nothing new.
"With the meticulous attention to detail of a historian and a storyteller's eye for human drama, Bernstein shines a beam of truth on a forgotten American tragedy. Heartbreaking and riveting."
—Gregg Olsen, New York Times best-selling author of Starvation Heights"A chilling and historic character study of the unfathomable suffering that desperation and fury, once unleashed inside a twisted mind, can wreak on a small town. Contemporary mass murderers Timothy McVeigh, Columbine's Dylan Klebold, and Virginia Tech's Seung-Hui Cho can each trace their horrific genealogy of terror to one man: Bath school bomber Andrew Kehoe."
—Mardi Link, author of When Evil Came to Good Hart A native of Chicago, Arnie Bernstein is the author of The Hoofs and Guns of the Storm: Chicago's Civil War Connections and Hollywood on Lake Michigan: 100 Years of Chicago and the Movies. He is the winner of a Puffin Foundation Grant and Midwest Regional History Publishing honors. Cover photographs courtesy of Bath School Museum.
Keywords: Bath, Michigan, Bath Disaster, Bath Massacre, School Violence, Andrew Kehoe, suicide bombing, mass murder, Arnie Bernstein, suicide bomber, dynamite |
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On the Web Arnie Bernstein's website Media Kit Read: Review Toledo Blade | 5/29/09 Read: Review Lansing City Pulse | 5/5/2009 Read: Q&A with Arnie Bernstein | PDF | 5/1/2009
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