Growing Up with a Killer

By CHRISTOPHER JOHN FARLEY

TV talk shows, made-for-TV movies and Mommie Dearest knockoff books have bombarded America with enough familial dysfunction to make Sophocles himself tear his eyes out. It's easy to be numbed by it all, to lose all one's sympathy for yet another father/mother/sibling who's been abused by an uncle/ cousin/grandparent who just happens to be a crackhead/alcoholic/satanic cult leader. And now here's Mikal Gilmore, brother of executed killer Gary Gilmore, with Shot in the Heart (Doubleday; 404 pages; $24.95), a book about his troubled clan. One might expect this effort to be another grotesque float in the continuing parade of household horrors. Instead Mikal, a writer for Rolling Stone, has crafted a powerful, well-researched work that rises loftily above the usual dysfunctional muck.

Gary Gilmore gained international notoriety when, after being convicted of murder, he successfully fought for his own execution; Norman Mailer wrote about Gary's final months of life in his 1979 fact-based novel The Executioner's Song, which won the Pulitzer Prize. Shot in the Heart is a more personal story, as Mikal Gilmore searches for insight into the origin of evil by examining his family -- his mother's shattered Mormon faith, his father's secret criminal past. Both Gilmore parents, haunted by their past, took their frustrations out on their children, dooming them to lives of anger and abuse as well. Mikal quotes Gary as saying, "My father was the first person I ever wanted to murder."

Gary chose to respond to his family's demons with violence. By writing this passionate book, Mikal faces up to them, and perhaps exorcises a few.