Defending Jacob by William Landay

This is one of the strangest books we have read and I mean that in a good way.  The idea of a person having to defend his own child on a murder charge is interesting enough but throw in the possibility of a murder gene and things get very interesting.  Three things hit me while reading this book.

1.        How does one ever objectively look at your own child and see them for who they are? 

2.       How can you keep major secrets from a loved one for so many years?

3.       Who was Andrew Barber?

Since I have no children of my own I must rely on other factors to help me understand this first question.  With 33 years of teaching under my belt and more than one student who served or is serving time for criminal activity, even murder, I think I have a bit of insight.  Still, I do not know that I would be more like Laurie and less like Andy in the situation.  Laurie saw behavior and ignored it. Maybe she felt guilty for not knowing what to do. Maybe she felt she really didn’t love her son as she should since he was acting out.  Andy should have recognized sings of potential trouble, if not from the family history he was hiding, then from the people he prosecuted every day.  Questions about whether or not therapy would have helped Jacob deal with anger issues go unanswered as does the question as to whether or not he was actually guilty of anything at all!

I can also understand that we do not tell our loved ones every single detail of our lives prior to meeting them but to keep something so important as a father in prison is beyond me.  Omissions like that always come out.  Was his mother deceased prior to meeting Laurie? Why did Laurie never ask about him?  I would at least want to see photos, know some medical history if I was planning a family, would talk to my mother-in-law about the type of person who provided the DNA for my pending family.  On the other hand, did Laurie have her own secrets she kept from Andy?  Did she tell him about her reactions to Jacob?  What she thought should be done with their child?

Andrew Barber-a man who buried his past so deeply inside himself that he believed his father to be dead.  He willed him out of his life and never seemed to have thought about him until his own child was brought up on murder charges.  He became exactly what his father was not-a law abiding, contributing member of society.  Or did he? His first instinct when he read about the knife was to get rid of it.  Was he protecting Jacob or himself?  He fervently defended his son to the point that I think it was more his denial that this tendency toward violence could be found in his own offspring than the belief that Jacob was innocent. Did he simply exert more self-control than his father?

Many other questions arise from this story.  Is the “murder gene” real? A quick search of the internet found that the defense has been used in criminal trials before and that many of the most heinous murders have found the perpetrators to have a similar genetic abnormality.  Did Father O’Leary act on behalf of Bloody Bill? Was Paftz really guilty or did Father O’Leary force him to write the suicide note? Did Jacob kill Ellen? 

I look forward to our discussion of this book. So many twists and turns!