Blood: A Memoir

In 1986, at 14, Grammy-nominated country singer Moorer woke to two gunshots fired outside the house she shared with her mother and older sister in Mobile, AL. Her father had shot and killed their mother on the front lawn before turning the weapon on himself. Moorer’s memoir explores the events leading up to this tragic incident and her relationship with her sister, Shelby Lynne, also a successful singer-songwriter. The narrative reads like an intimate journal with meditations on objects the author remembers from her childhood, such as her father’s brown cowboy hat or her mother’s purse. Interspersed photographs and pieces of ephemera help tell the history of her family’s unraveling. But what follows the murder-suicide is the formation of an unbreakable bond between sisters, as they forge onward from their trauma.