Eli Sanders is a Seattle journalist, and in While the City Slept he paints a detailed picture of the local neighborhood where Isaiah Kalebu murdered Teresa Butz in 2009. Theresa lived with Jennifer Hopper, and Kalebu attacked the two women in their home. Sanders tells the life story of all three people, explaining how their paths crossed and what happened as a result. It’s a humanizing approach for all three of them, giving an amazing amount of detail, starting even before their births, and showing their families and childhood experiences as well as the years closer to their lives in Seattle.  So it’s a story not just of a young man with deep psychological problems, but also of two girls who both have difficult lives in their youth and find love with each other. He is a sympathetic narrator and clearly has made a great effort to get to know those involved. He often tells the story in the present tense, which brings it more alive. Theresa and Jennifer are both interesting and lovely people, and Sanders tells readers a lot about them. He especially highlights how they struggled with their sexual identity and came to accept that they could find happiness with another woman. After telling their stories, Sanders moves to Kalebu’s life. He had many encounters with the criminal justice system and he worried his parents. He also had been seen by mental health professionals at many points, but still he was not identified as sufficiently dangerous to provide in-patient treatment. Sanders makes a powerful case that out society would do better and probably save money if we provided better treatment for people with mental illnesses. These are familiar points to many who have examined the way that we deal with serious mental illness in the USA, but Sanders examination of Kalebu’s life makes the point powerfully, with the added dimensions of race and immigration.

The unabridged audiobook is performed by Rene Ruiz: it’s a solid performance, with both compassion and seriousness. The energy level of the reading is not high, which is probably appropriate given the subject matter, but it can make it slow going occasionally.

© 2016 Christian Perring

Christian Perring has been reading memoirs and biographies of people with mental illness for decades.