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Internal
Combustion - Press Release
Media Contact: Mike Onorato
(201) 748 - 6361 / monorato@wiley.com
Radio
interviews:
Leslie Rossman, (510) 658-7520 / lrossman@pacbell.net
Linda Phelan, (508) 652-0030 / lphelan@comcast.net
Internal Combustion:
The Story of a Marriage and a Murder in the Motor City
By Joyce Maynard
In the spirit of In Cold
Blood, the bestselling author of To Die For tackles a horrendous
true crime. On Mother’s Day in 2004, a fourth grade teacher-of-the-year
and mother Nancy Seaman hacked her auto exec husband of thirty years,
Bob Seaman, to death with a hatchet she bought earlier that day at Home
Depot. When the body was discovered three days later in the backseat of
the family’s Ford Explorer, Nancy Seaman asserted that her husband
had been beating her, and she’d killed him in self-defense.
We are pleased to
bring you INTERNAL COMBUSTION: The Story of a Marriage and a Murder
in the Motor City (Jossey-Bass/Wiley, October 2006; $24.95; Cloth;
ISBN: 0-7879-8226-1) by bestselling author Joyce Maynard. To understand
this bizarre case and learn the real story as to why Nancy Seaman butchered
her husband with sixteen blows with the hatchet and dozens of stab wounds
with a kitchen knife, Maynard moved to Detroit — epicenter of a dying
American auto industry — to get a true sense of what went so horribly
wrong with an apparently perfect affluent American family.
In INTERNAL COMBUSTION,
Maynard goes beyond the headlines with the true story of the people who
knew the brutally murdered man and his wife, including their two sons,
the grandparents and siblings, the beautiful softball mom who is accused
of being the mistress of the deceased, uneasy school teachers, a brilliant
Transylvanian forensic pathologist, traumatized parents, a girls’
softball team, a ratings-hungry news team, a gorgeous prosecutor, and
an old-school police chief, to name a few. This brilliantly written, compelling
narrative explores the lives of the Seaman family who seemed to have everything:
vintage Mustangs, a Tudor-style house in a gated suburb, plenty of money
in the 401K — and marriage trouble. But at the heart of the story
are two brothers — linked by blood but irretrievably divided over
the crime that destroyed their family:
At Nancy Seaman’s
trial, her son Greg testified in defense of his mother that his father
was abusive while her son Jeff testified for the prosecution that his
mother was a cold blooded killer. With the eye of a divorced parent,
Maynard looks at them both, and at the way in which the two remain —
like so many children of dysfunctional families — the living victims
of a fatal war between their parents. And most surprisingly, she reports
on the last-minute reversal of the verdict on the part of the trial
judge, currently under appeal.
INTERNAL COMBUSTION is a compelling and dramatic psychological portrait
of the violent end of an apparently happy suburban family that reads like
a novel but is all terribly true.
About the Author:
Joyce Maynard has
been a highly successful and widely respected writer for over thirty
years, starting with her famous New York Times Magazine cover
story “An Eighteen Year Old Looks Back on Life” in
1972. Her novel To Die For was based on a true crime and made
into a major motion picture starring Nicole Kidman. Her 1998 memoir
At Home in the World was a best seller, and she has written many
other celebrated books including the novels Baby Love, Domestic Affairs,
Where Love Goes, The Usual Rules, and extensive journalism as a
staff writer and columnist for the New York Times, and contributor
to More, Life, TV Guide, McCalls, Redbook, Ladies’ Home Journal,
Good Housekeeping, Parenting Magazine, The New York Times Magazine
and O (The Oprah Magazine). She has appeared on Today, Good
Morning America, CNN, Charlie Rose, Hardball with Chris Matthews
and the CBS Evening News.
INTERNAL COMBUSTION:
The Story of a Marriage and a Murder in the Motor City
By Joyce Maynard
Jossey-Bass/Wiley, October 2006
ISBN: 0-7879-8226-1; $24.95/Cloth
ATTENTION REVIEWERS:
For the convenience of your readers, please include the following in your
review:
Wiley books are
available at your local bookstore or by calling 1-800-225-5945. In Canada,
call 1-800-567-4797.
For the latest on what’s happening at Jossey-Bass/Wiley, check out
our Web site at www.wiley.com
For more information
on INTERNAL COMBUSTION, or to schedule an interview with Joyce
Maynard, please contact:
Mike Onorato at (201) 748-6361 or monorato@wiley.com
You may contact
Mike for a list of Sample Interview Questions for Joyce Maynard,
author of INTERNAL COMBUSTION.
More from Internal
Combustion...
Listen to an Mp3
recording of the Introduction,
read by Joyce.
Read what other
writers are saying.
Joyce's book
tour itinerary
A
Look at the Cast of Characters
RECOMMEND JOYCEMAYNARD.COM TO A FRIEND
INTERNAL
COMBUSTION HOMEPAGE •
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