Announcing 'And Hell Followed With Her: Crossing the Dark Side of the American Border'

Longtime Orcinus readers are already familiar with the tragic case of Brisenia Flores and her killer, the Minuteman movement figure Shawna Forde.

Soon they will be able to read the full account of the story. It's titled And Hell Followed With Her: Crossing the Dark Side of the American Border, and it's being published by Nation Books. It will be on bookstore shelves (and on your doorstep, if you choose) on March 26, but you can order it in advance by clicking on the Amazon link above (or at Barnes and Noble or Powell's Books if you prefer.

The book represents several years' worth of work. Beyond covering the exploits of Forde -- including her trial and those of her cohorts -- the book also covers the entire story of the Minuteman movement, which I have been writing about continuously since 2005, including an earlier investigation of its fundraising activities.
You can read some of the results of my most recent investigative work on the Minutemen and Shawna Forde's role in the movement in the AlterNet article I wrote last year, which in many ways is a condensed version of much of the material in And Hell Followed.

However, as you'll see, there is a great deal more in the book, including much more detail, as well as the full story of what occurred in Arivaca that terrible night in 2009. The book opens with a recounting of how that night ended, with a 911 call to dispatchers in Tucson. You can hear that call here:




Of course, I have many people to thank for this book. But it is above all a project of the the Investigative Fund of the Nation Institute. It's really an amazing, weird, twisted, and deeply disturbing story, one worthy of the Coen Brothers (and in fact, we are currently working on selling the film rights to the book). I hope you are as moved reading it as I was writing it.

Here's the advance praise, aka the blurbs on the cover:

From Charles Pierce:

There is no more dogged or more courageous chronicler of the radical American Right than Dave Neiwert. In this latest work, he has found a human tragedy that is both utterly heartbreaking and utterly infuriating. He is the polestar by which we navigate the great distance between what we claim to be as a people, and what we truly are. A devastating, and extremely important, book.

From Joe Conason:

In a masterwork reminiscent of The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo, David Neiwert tells the gripping story of a far-right underworld awash in criminality, racism, and violence -- except that it happened here and every word is true.

From Mark Potok:

David Neiwert’s latest book is a cogent and comprehensive look at contemporary border vigilante groups, built around that movement’s most infamous crime — the murder of a Latino man and his 9-year-old daughter by a deranged nativist leader and her followers. This important volume reveals the stark racism and violence at the core of a movement that claims disingenuously to be defending America against dangerous foreigners.

 More soon about my upcoming bookstore appearances in support.

Cross-posted at Crooks and Liars.

Where did Dave go?

-- by Dave

Hi all. It's been awhile, hasn't it?

As many of whatever few readers I have remaining are probably aware, I've been running John Amato's blog Crooks and Liars for most of the past four years or so. Initially I cross-posted all my C&L work over here, but it wound up just being too much extra work at a time when I was overwhelmed with it. So gradually the cross-posting went away.

However, I stepped down as C&L's managing editor this past December and have now retired to the greener pastures of being a Senior Editor there. Lately I've hardly been posting at all. I wouldn't exactly say I'm retired from blogging, but I have taken a hiatus.

Much of what will be preoccupying my attention for the next several months will be signing and promoting my new book, And Hell Followed With Her: Crossing the Dark Side of the American Border, which is hitting bookstore shelves March 26. I'll have more on it here soon.

But I'm hoping to get back to blogging, too. What I really would like to do is get back to blogging here as I originally conceived it -- a sketchboard for larger projects, a chance to work out some long-form writing, plus the usual nuggets from subjects that interest me.

 Increasingly, a lot of that will be killer whale-related. This summer I'll be doing serious research on my next book, whose working title is Of Orcas and Men: What Killer Whales Can Teach Us. It will be an abrupt departure from my previous work on right-wing extremists, but one that people who know me understand fully.

I'll also be going back and back-filling my old C&L posts, finally cross-posting them here. Just so the record will be complete. As you can see, I spruced the place up a few weeks ago. Hope those of you who enjoyed my old original blog of ten years ago will pull up a chair and join me from time to time.