BoCo Bookshelf: Summer 2022
21 Jun 2022
What locals are writing and we’re reading
By Lisa Truesdale
After writing two novels, Erika Krouse assumed switching to nonfiction would be a breeze.
“I said to myself, ‘nonfiction is easy,’” she laughs. “I don’t have to make anything up; I just have to write the truth.”
Yet early on in the 15-month process of writing “Tell Me Everything: The Story of a Private Investigation,” she realized she was very wrong.
“As I wrote, it became increasingly more emotional and difficult,” she says. “Everything felt fraught, and the stakes were high if I got anything wrong or made a writing misstep.”
The book is part true crime, part memoir, weaving together challenges from her personal life with her crucial investigative work on a landmark sexual assault investigation involving a college football team.
Krouse doesn’t name names, omitting even the name of “the small university city in the Front Range Foothills of Colorado’s Rocky Mountains.” Of course, anyone who’s been around Boulder long enough can easily deduce that Krouse is detailing the facts of a very public scandal at CU Boulder that began about 20 years ago.
While it was—and still is—important to Krouse to safeguard the identities of the survivors in the case, she’s honest throughout the book regarding her work as a private investigator and her own struggles, including her painful history with sexual violence.
“When you’ve experienced tragedy or trauma, your primary connection is to the pain,” she says. “But when you write about the past, you begin to shift that connection to the experience of writing, rather than to the original horror. It’s a form of alchemy to make something beautiful from something terrible, and I feel grateful for the opportunity to try.”
Since the book’s March publication, it has appeared in People magazine as a “People Pick” and was optioned by Playground Entertainment for a TV adaptation.
“By the time I finished, I knew this was the most difficult thing I’ve ever written,” Krouse says. “But I think it’s also the best thing I’ve ever written.”
More great local reads
Moon Chimes
Laura L.B. Border
Border, president of the Boulder Writers Alliance, spent more than a year observing the full moon to write this poetry chapbook. She hopes her inspirational, calming poems will encourage readers to spend time outdoors at night—and perhaps become moon watchers and poets, too. bwa.org
Beneath Cruel Waters
Jon Bassoff
Readers familiar with Longmont will recognize some places in Bassoff’s ninth novel, though the fictionalized setting is called Thompsonville in the book. This somewhat creepy, gothic noir psychological thriller is about a man who returns to his hometown to confront his past, only to uncover traumatic memories and secrets he thought were long buried. jonbassoff.com
Noryn’s Legend
Jenny Balagna
Balagna’s first novel is history, fantasy and romance, all rolled into one. Princess Corinne Kinroth of the country of Noryn is expected to marry a leader, not become one, yet she’s willing to fight every obstacle in her path to rightfully assume the throne and lead her nation the way her father did, with skill and tact. norynslegend.com
