The Shooting of Rabbit Wells: An American Tragedy

The author of Anna: A Daughter's Life, a New York Times Notable Book of 1993, follows the collision course between a black youth and the white police officer who killed him in a sleepy New Jersey suburb in 1972.

This memoir of a childhood acquaintance who became a peripheral casualty of social turmoil is affecting despite a curious remoteness. Loizeaux (Anna: A Daughter's Life, 1993) revisits the suburban New Jersey of his childhood to exhume the story of a charismatic schoolmate of mixed race, William ``Rabbit'' Wells, mistakenly shot and killed by a young police officer, William Sorgie, in 1973. This account of Wells's life and death is indisputably a structural marvel, nimbly flitting back and forth in time in a way that should be confusing but isn't, thanks to his unfailingly clear prose and his eye for the detail that instantly impresses a scene on the mind. Piecing together a fragmented image of Wells--and, much less distinctly, the still-living Sorgie--Loizeaux flirts again and again with the circumstances of Jan. 13, 1973, but leaves the heart of the matter to a powerful climactic narrative. But while precise, Loizeaux's style also exhibits a sort of contrived-sounding hauntedness. For despite apposite autobiographical touches, the book doesn't really establish the source of the author's depth of feeling for Wells, as manifested in sometimes almost incantatory writing and heavy-handed symbolism. And while the transitory presence Wells had, even for those who became closest to him, understandably makes for a dearth of solid facts 25 years later, Loizeaux's rather flat novelistic reconstructions of speculative events become unwelcome as they mount up, repetitively signaled by phrases like ``I can imagine . . .'' or ``I suppose. . . .'' Ultimately, the wounds seem to have healed long ago (albeit with visible scar tissue) and been overtaken by broader upheavals. Thus, this story's power resides in its careful reckoning of a personal loss, not in the ``echoes of our national life''-- Vietnam, urban rioting--that he perfunctorily refers to. Still, a quietly heroic rescue of a pointlessly stolen life, and an evocative snapshot of an extraordinary moment in an ordinary place. -- Copyright ©1997, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.

In 1966, a 14-year-old multiracial runaway from foster homes was brought to the Bonnie Brae Farm for Boys as his "last chance." Here he apparently thrived, eventually moving in with families in this predominantly white New Jersey town and graduating from the local public school. Seven years later he was killed, the innocent victim of a panicking policeman. While the author suggests racial stereotyping may have precipitated the shooting, the actual facts remain obscure. Loizeaux, a former classmate of Rabbit though barely acquainted with him, remained haunted by the shooting. His book attempts to put a human face on what otherwise would be simply another statistic. Loizeaux tells a moving story, yet his liberal use of imagined dialog and scenarios to augment the scant documentation about the real Rabbit is problematic. This book seems less about Rabbit and more about Loizeaux's personal quest to try to understand how this tragedy could have occurred in the seemingly idyllic community of his youth. Appropriate but not essential for public libraries.?Faye Powell, Portland State Univ. Lib., Ore.
Copyright 1997 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Twenty-one-year-old Rabbit Wells was killed on a January night in 1973, mistakenly fired upon by police officer William Sorgie. Author Loizeaux went to school with Wells, and here he attempts to understand why Wells, with all his promise, died so young. Not that Wells' life was filled with happiness. Fatherless and raised by a neglectful mother, Wells' mixed race only added to his troubles at the all-white New Jersey high school where he met Loizeaux. In spite of his many problems, Wells began to make a life for himself after high school and seemed headed for college. This is also Sorgie's story, a decent man from a good family, a Vietnam veteran, and a police officer who terribly misjudged the situation and killed Wells. Though the final outcome is known from page one, Loizeaux creates surprising tension as his book drives to its bitter conclusion. Brian McCombie