He Was Nothing Special, What Happened Was Not Random

Bright Young Women by Jessica Knowles is powerful literary fiction about real events at its best. The book’s title is a reference to remarks made by the judge presiding over the serial killer’s trial in Miami. In an interview author Jessica Knoll states, “He lamented the tragedy of this case as being the loss of the serial killer’s future, and that he showed great talent and promise at the law, and he could have done all these amazing things with his life, but he went another way, and he was a bright young man, and from the moment I heard those words, I knew I had to take them and give them back to the women.” 

She accomplishes this through the use of engaging, relatable characters, a plot line that compels readers to turn pages, and a gift for creative writing. In the book one of her characters observes, “‘I’ve tried to make sense of how someone who didn’t stalk his victims in advance ended up going after the best and the brightest. And I think that’s it, the thing they all had in common—a light that outshone his. He targets college campuses and sorority houses because he’s looking for the cream of the crop. He wants to extinguish us—we are the ones who remind him that he’s not that smart, not that good-looking, that there’s nothing particularly special about him.’”

Knowles makes points throughout the storyline emphasizing how the women in her book he’d targeted were among those who excelled at what they did, and were on the brink of escalating their lives through events they already set in motion. This holds true for the survivors in the book as well. In one passage Knowles writes a character’s thoughts, “Law enforcement would rather we remember a dull man as brilliant than take a good hard look at the role they played in this absolute sideshow, and I am sick to death of watching them in their pressed shirts and cowboy boots, in their comfortable leather interview chairs, in hugely successful and critically acclaimed crime documentaries, talking about the intelligence and charm and wiliness of an ordinary misogynist. This story is not that. The story is not that.” 

As Knowles researched the case she found that the media descriptions of the killer were not even warranted in this case, that he was of average intelligence, not charismatic, and he actually rubbed women the wrong way, triggering in some, as Gavin de Becker wrote about it in his iconic book The Gift of Fear, a primal voice deep inside each of us, programmed since the first cell split, that triggers an innate alarm to set in motion a physiological urgency for self preservation. Knowles writes, “Women got that feeling about him, that funny one we all get when we know something isn’t right, but we don’t know how to politely extricate ourselves from the situation without escalating the threat of violence or harassment. That is not a skill women are taught, the same way men are not taught that it is okay to leave a woman alone if what she wants is to be left alone.”

I marvel how Knowles could assemble a number of seemingly disparate segments to this story so seamlessly, and still have the reader want to linger in many passages of powerful word combinations scattered throughout the book, we marvel at their ability to provide perspective and propel the story forward, highlighting them to revisit. This was one such quotation, “The next time I saw him, he would be wearing a jacket and tie, he would have groupies and the New York Times on his side, and when he asked me where I was currently living, legally, I would have no choice but to give my home address to a man who murdered thirty-five women and escaped prison twice.”  

Knowles writes vividly about the things the press should have covered, the fallout from the heinous crime, its aftermath, its victims, and its survivors. She puts readers back on that Tallahassee street the morning after the vicious and traumatic 1/15/1978 attack as the young dazed women evacuate the sorority house “…we ran out into the storm, the flash of the bulbs invoking the same panicked plea as lightning—please, just don’t strike me. The group shifted so that our hands were on one another’s shoulders, trying to push through the kicked wasp’s nest in a wedding conga line. I heard a woman shouting to back the fuck up! For a moment, I feared it was me.”  

At some point one of the characters muses, “…he was nothing special, and what happened was not random.” A theme evoked in this book is the need to avoid glorifying perpetrators of violence, or giving them the feeling of importance they crave by making them the story, as that essentially re-victimizes those most affected by his criminal attacks. For those who remember the headlines and sound bites from these crimes, they were largely about him, his “promise” derailed by “bad choices.” This book shines a 21st century flashlight back on events left in 20th century shadows. It is up to each of us to understand how it felt to be left in those shadows, and use that knowledge not to leave victims in the dark by turning your flashlight in the wrong direction. 

Near the book’s end some of the survivors are planting ferns on a hillside: “The hope is that when we come back in the fall, one of the ferns will flag Ruth’s final resting place. But I can do better than hope. I have faith, because nature is the very best example of integration. Things grow differently when they’re damaged, showing us how to occupy strange new ground to bloom red instead of green. We can be found, brighter than before.”  In a horrible attack, lives are cut short, their futures extinguished. By remembering those taken from us, we honor who they were, by going forward into our future, we carry them with us by acknowledging the ways they affected our lives, and allow ourselves to unfold from the grief enough to let some of their light inside us shine as we move forward.