Publishers Weekly
01/19/2015
Delving deep into the history of Boston circa the 19th century, Montillo (The Lady and Her Monsters) unearths a riveting true-crime tale that rivals anything writers in the 21st century could concoct. Jesse Harding Pomeroy, an adolescent from a deeply troubled family, earns notoriety in working-class Boston and surrounding towns by kidnapping and torturing young boys. The sensational journalism of the period soon turns him into a subject of grotesque fascination in the city and beyond. After Jesse is apprehended by court order and sent off to reform school, his mother secures a commutation that returns the teenager to the city, with monstrous results. A masterly storyteller, Montillo skillfully evokes the poor and patrician neighborhoods that served as a backdrop for the crimes, particularly after the 1872 fire that ravaged the city center. The police investigations that tracked down Jesse are stunning in their similarity to modern-day sleuthing. Alongside the graphic, disturbing details of Pomeroy’s crimes, Montillo chronicles the contemporary fascination with mental illness by writers such as Herman Melville, Oliver Wendell Holmes, and other paragons of 19th-century Boston. A host of doctors and lawyers also figure prominently in these pages, as they all try to understand what drove a young boy to commit horrific crimes that gripped a city for decades. B&w illus. Agent: Rob Weisbach, Rob Weisbach Creative Management. (Mar.)
From the Publisher
The Wilderness of Ruin is a captivating tale of depravity in the Athens of America. Roseanne Montillo masterfully conjures a lost Boston where a teen-age ‘demon’ hunts children and the city itself is a tinderbox ripe for the flames.” — Mitchell Zuckoff, author of the New York Times bestsellers Lost in Shangri-La and Frozen in Time
“Supremely creepy. ... As thrilling as it is disturbing.” — Boston Globe
“A compulsively fascinating and chilling read on the nature of evil.” — Minneapolis Star Tribune
“A riveting true-crime tale that rivals anything writers in the 21st century could concoct. ... [Montillo is] a masterly storyteller.” — Publishers Weekly
“A lively, evocative reinvigoration of Boston’s Gilded Age. ... Cinematic. ... A chillingly drawn, expertly researched slice of grim Boston history.” — Kirkus Reviews
“A dramatically told history of murder, madness, and urban growing pains.” — Shelf Awareness
Shelf Awareness
A dramatically told history of murder, madness, and urban growing pains.
Boston Globe
Supremely creepy. ... As thrilling as it is disturbing.
Mitchell Zuckoff
The Wilderness of Ruin is a captivating tale of depravity in the Athens of America. Roseanne Montillo masterfully conjures a lost Boston where a teen-age ‘demon’ hunts children and the city itself is a tinderbox ripe for the flames.
Minneapolis Star Tribune
A compulsively fascinating and chilling read on the nature of evil.
From the Publisher - AUDIO COMMENTARY
"A chillingly drawn, expertly researched slice of grim Boston history." —Kirkus
Library Journal - Audio
10/15/2015
Montillo (The Lady and Her Monsters) presents a chilling account of an 11-year-old psychopath, Jesse Pomeroy, who began luring small children to secluded areas in the Boston area, where he tortured and mutilated them. Two survivors' testimonies and an eyewitness account connecting Pomeroy to one of the victims led to his arrest and conviction in 1874. The boy was sentenced to death by hanging, and his conviction created conflict between the medical community and the judicial system as to what constituted just and humane punishment for one so young. Opposing viewpoints caused Gov. William Gaston to refuse to sign the death warrant, an act that led to a commuted sentence for Pomeroy in 1876. While Montillo's historical depiction of Boston in the late 19th century is excellent, Emily Woo Zeller comes up short in vocal characterizations, and her monotone delivery lacks emotion and interest. VERDICT This title will hold great interest for historical crime buffs, but skip the audio version. ["Recommended for readers who enjoy American history, especially those interested in Boston or the history of crime and punishment": LJ 2/1/15 review of the Morrow hc.]—JoAnn Funderburk, Rowlett, TX
Library Journal
02/01/2015
In the early 1870s, a mentally disabled teenager named Jesse Pomeroy preyed on children in and around Boston, capturing, torturing, and in a few cases killing his victims. Montillo (The Lady and Her Monsters) tells his story, with all the grisly details, in this fascinating book. Pomeroy's crimes captured public attention well beyond Boston and led to increased debate about the appropriate punishment and treatment for mentally ill criminals. The gruesome tale is supplemented by frequent diversions into Boston history, including an account of the fire that swept the city in 1872, a chronicle of prisons in the region, and a sketch of the noted physician Oliver Wendell Holmes. These asides combine to give an effective picture of the metropolis and its influential citizens and institutions in the decades following the Civil War. The longest sections, outside of those on Pomeroy, are devoted to novelist Herman Melville, who had his own struggles with mental illness, both in his characters and in himself. Montillo does not draw a very compelling parallel between Melville and Pomeroy, but the passages about the author of Moby-Dick are interesting nonetheless. VERDICT Recommended for readers who enjoy American history, especially those interested in Boston or the history of crime and punishment. [See Prepub Alert, 9/14/14.]—Nicholas Graham, Univ. of North Carolina, Chapel Hill
AUGUST 2015 - AudioFile
The working-class neighborhoods of Boston in the 1870s were disturbed and frightened by a series of child abductions and tortures. The culprit turns out to be a child himself: 14-year-old Jesse Pomeroy, who, after imprisonment, goes on to commit more murders later in life. Narrator Emily Woo Zeller employs a well-measured pace. Her tone is informative yet, when appropriate, full of the foreboding that spread through Boston during the period of the brutal and shocking murders. Although Pomeroy's story is interesting, the inclusion in the book of so much extraneous detail about prominent figures of the era suggests that the author lacked enough information to fill an entire book. S.E.G. © AudioFile 2015, Portland, Maine
Kirkus Reviews
2015-01-07
A lively, evocative reinvigoration of Boston's Gilded Age and the psychopathic young stalker who threatened public safety. Previously fascinated by the literary constructs of Mary Shelley, Montillo (The Lady and Her Monsters, 2013, etc.) explores a dark period in 19th-century Boston when a notorious serial torturer attacked young boys. At the center of the author's historical tapestry is Jesse Pomeroy, whose relentlessly abusive childhood may have inspired the many beating and torturing rages against youth in the Boston area in the 1870s when he was 14 years old. He became known as both the "Red Devil" and one of America's youngest serial killers. With cinematic narration, Montillo retraces Pomeroy's sadistic crime spree involving the vicious persecution of boys along the Chelsea, Massachusetts, waterfront and, later, in South Boston, after his mother relocated the family. Once his conviction and sentencing to reform school was completed, however, Pomeroy was released into his mother's custody only to resume his crimes with murderous intensity. The author shares these bloody details with grisly accuracy through the deft interpretation of journals, newspaper articles, books and Pomeroy's own autobiography. Though this morbid decade in Boston's history could stand on its own, Montillo effectively incorporates divergent narrative threads profiling the lives of novelist Herman Melville and Oliver Wendell Holmes. Melville was fascinated by Pomeroy's crimes and enlisted Holmes to explore the nature of madness and the psychological unraveling of Pomeroy who, in 1875, as the area still recovered from the Great Boston Fire, was handed a death sentence by hanging (after much official deliberation, the sentence was commuted to life imprisonment). Montillo creatively revives this tarnished New England era with the meticulous focus of a seasoned archivist and the graphic descriptive powers of a historical novelist. A chillingly drawn, expertly researched slice of grim Boston history.
