We Keep the Dead Close

A Murder at Harvard and a Half Century of Silence

Becky Cooper

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Hardback

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William Heinemann Ltd
12 January 2021

True crime
English

For readers gripped by In Cold Blood and I'll Be Gone in the Dark, We Keep the Dead Close is both a haunting true crime narrative of an unsolved 1969 murder at a prestigious institution and a lyrical memoir of obsession and love for a girl who dreamt of rising among men. SHORTLISTED FOR THE 2021 CRIME WRITERS' ASSOCIATION ALCS GOLD DAGGER FOR NON-FICTION 'I'm obsessed!' REESE WITHERSPOON 'Exhilarating ... Becky Cooper masterfully uncovers the story of Harvard undergrad Jane Britton.' VOGUE ________________________ You have to remember, he reminded me, that Harvard is older than the U.S. government. You have to remember because Harvard doesn't let you forget. 1969- the height of counterculture and the year universities would seek to curb the unruly spectacle of student protest; the winter that Harvard University would begin the tumultuous process of merging with Radcliffe, its all-female sister school; and the year that Jane Britton, an ambitious 23-year-old graduate student in Harvard's Anthropology Department and daughter of Radcliffe Vice President J. Boyd Britton, would be found bludgeoned to death in her Cambridge, Massachusetts apartment. Forty years later, Becky Cooper, a curious undergrad, will hear the first whispers of the story. In the first telling the body was nameless. The story was this- a Harvard student had had an affair with her professor, and the professor had murdered her in the Peabody Museum of Archaeology and Ethnology because she'd threatened to talk about the affair. Though the rumour proves false, the story that unfolds, one that Cooper will follow for ten years, is even more complex- a tale of gender inequality in academia, a 'cowboy culture' among empowered male elites, the silencing effect of institutions, and our compulsion to rewrite the stories of female victims. WE KEEP THE DEAD CLOSE is a memoir of mirrors, misogyny and murder. It is at once a rumination on the violence and oppression that rules our revered institutions, a ghost story reflecting one young woman's past onto another's present, and a love story for a girl who was lost to history. ________________________ 'A brilliant and extraordinary book.' PHILIPPE SANDS 'Top drawer investigative reporting. Riveting. A refreshing reason to sacrifice sleep' SARAH JESSICA PARKER ' You have to remember, he reminded me, that Harvard is older than the U.S. government. You have to remember because Harvard doesn't let you forget. If that sentence, paired with the title, doesn't get your spidey senses tingling, I don't know what will' REFINERY29

By: Becky Cooper
Imprint: William Heinemann Ltd
Country of Publication: United Kingdom
Dimensions: Height: 215mm, Width: 142mm, Spine: 45mm
Weight: 615g
ISBN: 9781785151989
ISBN 10: 1785151983
Pages: 512
Publication Date: 12 January 2021
Audience: General/trade , ELT Advanced
Format: Hardback
Publisher's Status: Active

Becky Cooper is a former New Yorker writer, assistant to David Remnick, Adam Gopnik and D.T. Max, producer for the New Yorker Radio Hour. Currently, she is artist-in-residence at Harvard University, as well as Senior Fellow at Brandeis's Schuster Institute for Investigative Reporting. Her undergraduate thesis, a literary biography of David Foster Wallace, won Harvard's Hoopes Prize, the highest undergraduate award for research and writing. In 2013, she published Mapping Manhattan- A Love and Sometimes Hate Story in Maps by 75 New Yorkers (Abrams), which is currently in its fifth printing.

Reviews for We Keep the Dead Close: A Murder at Harvard and a Half Century of Silence

Stunning ... This vivid, graceful story is as much about obsession and a search for belonging as it is about the romance of exploration, the unglamorous logistics of scientific fieldwork, the secretiveness of clans, the cruelty of chance, and the doggedness inherent to the best narrative journalism. Searching, atmospheric and ultimately entrancing ... A vivid account of a notorious murder at Harvard, and a meditation on the stories that we tell ourselves about violence ... With a deft touch, she interrogates not just the evidence, witnesses and suspects, but her own biases and assumptions, as well. Exhilarating and seductive ... Haunting, fascinating, and surprising. Cooper will keep you riveted. Exhilarating [...] Becky Cooper masterfully uncoversthe story of Harvard undergrad Jane Britton * Vogue *