cover image Long Mile Home: Boston Under Attack, the City's Courageous Recovery, and the Epic Hunt for Justice

Long Mile Home: Boston Under Attack, the City's Courageous Recovery, and the Epic Hunt for Justice

Scott Helman and Jenna Russell. Dutton, $27.95 (352p) ISBN 978-0-525-95448-4

On one of the most picture perfect race days in recent memory, two homemade bombs%C2%A0rocked the finished line of the Boston Marathon and plunged New England's largest city into shock as local, state and federal law enforcement officers fanned out to track down Tamerlan and Dzhokhar Tsarnaev, the Chechen immigrant brothers whose disillusionment with the U.S. allegedly led to one of the country's most deadly terrorist attacks. The account by two award-winning Boston Globe reporters mirrors newspaper's original coverage. They get inside the heads of dozens of the participants, including a doctor who ran the race and tended to bombing victims, a Boston police officer, a marathon official, one of the injured spectators, and intermingle those riveting tales with stories about the four people who died in the tragedy. As the manhunt unfolds, the tactical moves by local law enforcement officials and political leaders take center stage. With a tone that owes more to breathless storytelling than dispassionate newsgathering, the book sometimes skirts the edge of melodrama. But the authors succeed in communicating an authentic sense of the anxiety and claustrophobia that gripped the region and the resilience that emerged from the ordeal. (Apr.)