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This is a searing family memoir of a wild boyhood in Texas that led to the vicious murder of the author's brother by actor Woody Harrelson's father. In 1968 the author's brother, Alan, was murdered by Charles Harrelson, notorious hit man and father of Woody Harrelson. Alan was only thirty-one when he disappeared and for more than six months his family did not know what had happened to him, until his remains were found in a ditch in Texas. There was an eyewitness to the murder: Harrelson's girlfriend, who agreed to testify. Even so, Harrelson was acquitted with the help of the most famous criminal lawyer in America. Writing with cold-eyed grief and lacerating humor, the author, a trial lawyer himself, shares intimate details about his striving Jewish family that perhaps set Alan on a course for self-destruction, and the wrenching miscarriage of justice when Alan Berg's murderer went unpunished. Since burying his brother, the author has never discussed how he died. But then about three years ago, details from his past crept into his memory and he began to research his family's legacy and his brother's death, informed by his expertise as a seasoned attorney. The result is a raw and painful memoir that taps into the darkest human behaviors, a fascinating portrait of an iconic American place, and a true-crime courtroom murder drama, perfectly calibrated.… (more)
User reviews
Run, Brother, Run is at its best when Mr. Berg focuses on his family, his brother, all the ways his family and the events of his brother's murder affected his own life. It's a great and tangled story of divorce, dreams never realized, and family entanglement. Alan Berg is a likeable guy from his brother's description - a bit feckless, more reckless, but likeable - taking after and attempting to defy his father in a struggle that ends in his death.
The failures of the book occur as the author smears everyone he has ever known or who touched the case. If you crossed his path he's got an axe to grind (unless you're "Racehorse" Haynes). Next, he retries the case against Charles Harrelson in minute detail with himself cast as the prosecutor. This chunk of the book must have been cathartic for Mr. Berg, but for this reader it was excruciating. The root of the missteps in this book appear to lie in the deep and undying rage that its author holds - rage against everything and everyone (including himself). At its most florid, his rage taints his writing making him supremely unsympathetic. When it is reigned in it provides color and form to the stories he tells. His rage is illustrative of the affects of murder and dysfunction on the people touched by it, but it just isn't all that interesting to watch its owner take it out for a drive.