The Wilderness of Ruin: A Tale of Madness, Fire, and the Hunt for America's Youngest Serial Killer

In the early 1870s, a mentally disabled teenager named Jesse Pomeroy preyed on children in and around Boston, capturing, torturing, and in a few cases killing his victims. Montillo (The Lady and Her Monsters) tells his story, with all the grisly details, in this fascinating book. Pomeroy's crimes captured public attention well beyond Boston and led to increased debate about the appropriate punishment and treatment for mentally ill criminals. The gruesome tale is supplemented by frequent diversions into Boston history, including an account of the fire that swept the city in 1872, a chronicle of prisons in the region, and a sketch of the noted physician Oliver Wendell Holmes. These asides combine to give an effective picture of the metropolis and its influential citizens and institutions in the decades following the Civil War. The longest sections, outside of those on Pomeroy, are devoted to novelist Herman Melville, who had his own struggles with mental illness, both in his characters and in himself. Montillo does not draw a very compelling parallel between Melville and Pomeroy, but the passages about the author of Moby-Dick are interesting nonetheless.