After Botham: Healing From My Brother's Murder by a Police Officer

by Allisa Charles-Findley, Jeremiah Cobra (With)

Overview

On September 6, 2018, White Dallas police officer Amber Guyger opened the door of Apartment 1478. Inside, Botham Jean lay on his couch, having hung up from the daily call with his sister, Allisa. She'd encouraged her brother to stay home for the night's opening Dallas Cowboys game as sports bars would be too dangerous. Guyger instantly assumed the large black man watching the game was a burglar in her home. She shot him, then failed to render aid as he succumbed to the wound she'd inflicted. Officer Guyger forever altered the lives of the hundreds who knew and loved this kind-hearted young man who lead worship at his church and worked diligently at Price Waterhouse Cooper. This is Allisa's story of what happened to her brother, and how she fought through the aftermath to find life After Botham.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780827201132
Publisher:	Chalice Press
Publication date:	09/05/2023
Pages:	195
Sales rank:	1,036,921
Product dimensions:	5.90(w) x 8.90(h) x 0.60(d)

About the Author

Allisa Charles-Findley is the sister of Botham Jean and president of the Botham Jean Foundation, which promotes Christian intervention for social change. She is also president of Sisters of the Movement, a coalition of sisters of police brutality victims working in unity. She holds a Master's in Healthcare Management and, prior to her current social justice work, spent 15 years in health insurance.


Jeremiah Cobra is a teacher and writer in Los Angeles with degrees from Howard University and the University of
Southern California. Cobra studied and taught in Japan for seven years. His 2020 debut novel, And Then He Shot His
Cousin, was inspired by his experience growing up in foster care from the age of 9.

Editorial Reviews

08/21/2023

In this wrenching debut, Charles-Findley recalls the 2018 murder of her brother Botham Jean by a white police officer as he sat at home in Dallas, Tex., watching a sports game. In the surreal, dizzying days afterwards, Charles-Findley struggled to process the loss (“it wasn’t really Botham who was killed but someone who looked like him,” she told herself), while law enforcement downplayed his death, calling it “an unfortunate accident.” Charged with murder, police officer Amber Guyger, who said she’d entered Jean’s apartment believing it was her own and shot him thinking he was an intruder, went to trial in 2019 and received a 10-year prison sentence. Still, peace of mind remained elusive for Charles-Findley, as the murders of Ahmaud Arbery, Breonna Taylor, George Floyd, and other Black men and women played out across television screens and social media, igniting “the trauma of losing Botham all over again,” and spurring her to cofound the Sisters of the Movement initiative, which is dedicated to lobbying for police reform. Interweaving the account with poignant memories of her brother—his gentleness, his love of music—Charles-Findley wades into the complexities of grief that persist long after headlines have faded, the internal battles it gives rise to (“I am not quite where I want to be with God”), and the injustices of a country in which the deaths of Black people “have been relegated to casualties of war.” It’s a powerful tribute. (Sept.)

Publishers Weekly