Arnie Bernstein

"With the meticulous attention to detail of a historian and a storyteller's eye for human drama, Bernstein shines a beam of truth on a forgotten American tragedy. Heartbreaking and riveting."
Gregg Olsen, New York Times best-selling author of Starvation Heights

On May 18, 1927, in a horrific conflagration of dynamite and blood, a madman forever changed the small town of Bath, Michigan. Bath Massacre takes readers back more than eighty years to that fateful day, when Andrew Kehoe set off a cache of explosives concealed in the basement of the local school, killing thirty-eight children and six adults. Among the dead was Kehoe, who literally blew himself to bits by setting off a concealed dynamite charge in his car. The next day, on Kehoe's farm, his wife’s remains—burned beyond recognition after Kehoe set his property and buildings ablaze—were found tied to a hand cart, the skull crushed and objects placed with macabre ritualism next to her body.

With the horror of Oklahoma City and 9/11 still fresh in Americans' minds, the seemingly endless stories of school violence epitomized by the Columbine shooting, and suicide bombers around the globe, Bath Massacre resonates powerfully for modern readers and reminds us that terrorism and murder on a large scale are sadly not just a product of our times.

Some illustrations in the book have not been seen in over 80 years. Bolstered by cooperation with survivors and their descendants, the book includes exclusive interviews with the people who lived through that terrible day in 1927.