Bringing Ben Home
Want to read a sledgehammer of a story? Consider this page-turning, uplifting view of hope in the midst of injustice. Love wins.
Barbara Bradley Hagerty’s new book, Bringing Ben Home (Riverhead Books, 2024) tells the true story of Ben Spencer and a murder in Dallas in 1987. But Hagerty also uses the story to pull binoculars to her eye as she and we examine the mountain we call justice.
In her hands, Ben’s story becomes a vivid examination of the whole vicious cycle of injustice, that kaleidoscope of racism, class, DNA, best intentions, systemic sloppiness, hubris, and inertia. The story takes us up to peaks of hope, followed by soul-shattering falls.
It’s about careerism, politics, the weaknesses of eyewitness testimony, lost evidence, the scandal of jailhouse snitches, and the influence of money and power. The book also describes the great improvements in law enforcement as new thinking, leadership, levels of sanity, and technologies have entered the scene.
Beyond all that, Bringing Ben Home tells a “Timberline story.” One innocent man passes through the muddy lowlands of the American justice system, and is changed by it. But he also lives above it. Even as his body was incarcerated, his mind and spirit soared as high as the eagles. The book offers strong testimony that adversity may come, but it does not win.
For 32 years of prison life, Ben “… was anchoring his hope over and beyond the prison walls of his human life, into the eternal, a time beyond death. He no longer counted on witness recantations or biological evidence, the fickle stuff of humanity, but looked to the evidence of things not seen…”
Bringing Ben Home carries a life-altering payload of tenacity, resilience, faith, integrity, and the glow of true love in marriage and family.
This is one bracing, galvanizing, and then lovely story. It’s one of the best studies of what it is to be human I’ve read.
It often pulled me out of my office or from my bed and planted me back in my reading chair. If you care about justice, the power of love and faith, and living above the gritty streets of loss and suffering, spend some time in Ben’s story.
The Texas Observer Magazine carried an excellent review of the book. To read it, just click here.