Allan Wolf’s latest YA novel draws on the death of a childhood friend

Decades after the death of Allan Wolf’s boyhood friend Ed Disney, Wolf and his brother set out along a back road near their hometown of Blacksburg, Va., to find the exact spot where two young assailants shot Disney and left him to die.

The Asheville-based author will launch Who Killed Christopher Goodman? — a young-adult novel based on the events surrounding this crime — at Spellbound Children’s Bookshop on Friday, March 17. While Wolf’s book is a fictionalized account, the Christopher Goodman of the title isn’t exactly the Ed Disney who inspired his character. But as Wolf describes his search, it’s clear the reality of his friend’s death still looms large in his imagination and in the imagination of his now-grown high school friends.

“Suddenly our blood ran cold,” Wolf says of finding the scene of the crime. “On the ground was a little plastic cup with dried flowers. Somebody had been there within the last few months and actually left this little memorial.”

In a way, Christopher Goodman is itself a return to Blacksburg: It’s the first time Wolf has taken up his own youth as a subject after a long and winding journey to become a prominent YA writer and a popular presenter at schools across the country. Wolf had been teaching at Virginia Tech and leading what he describes as “weird, Dada-esque poetry events” when a colleague got a job with the Asheville-based organization Poetry Alive. Wolf followed suit and wound up touring with the troupe that evangelizes young people for poetry and performance.

“I ended up working with kids,” he says, and in the process, “I met a bazillion teachers and librarians and editors. I got to know all of those people through performance poetry … and one thing led to another, and that’s how I started writing for kids.”

Wolf published his first book, The Blood-Hungry Spleen (a collection of poems exploring the working of the human body), in 2003. Since then he has published a new book every few years, including New Found Land, about the Lewis and Clark expedition and The Watch That Ends the Night: Voices From the Titanic. At the same time, he’s kept up an unrelenting schedule of school visits and performances.

Though he’s now working solo, his goal is similar to when he worked with Poetry Alive — to turn young people on to poetry. “The major point is not that they become poets,” he says, “but that they can begin to see the world through a poet’s eyes.”

As Wolf’s writing career developed, the events surrounding his friend’s death remained sharp in his memory. “I journaled on it, I wrote a series of poems about it,” he says. “I’d been collecting notes forever.” Then, after he pitched the idea to his publisher and began his research, he found he wasn’t the only one. “I opened up this whole Pandora’s box of people who have been obsessed with this kid’s murder.”

Still, Christopher Goodman is a novel. “Everyone wants this book to be about this kid, Ed Disney, but it’s not,” Wolf says. “The more I dug into the research, the more I started fictionalizing it.” And while he originally imagined a frame in which adults come together years later to process what happened to their friend, during the writing it became a story told in multiple points of view, of teens forced to trace the apparently innocuous choices that left their friend — so deeply admired for his kindness and his unique approach to life — alone with his murderer.

It’s also about how these young people deal with the aftermath.

“There wasn’t anyone who could talk us through it,” Wolf says of those touched by Disney’s death. But Christopher Goodman’s friends make peace with this tragedy, and the author hopes that his book will bring closure to those affected by the real-life crime as well.

“I feel like I have created something that lets those people off the hook who feel like they could have done something,” he says. “I hope those people who have suffered more than me will find some solace.”

WHAT: Allan Wolf presents Who Killed Christopher Goodman?
WHERE: Spellbound Children’s Bookshop, 640 Merrimon Ave., spellboundbookshop.com
WHEN: Friday, March 17, 6 p.m.

I loved this book! The full review will be posted soon at kaitgoodwin.com/books! Thank you very much for this wonderful opportunity to connect books to their readers!

Who Killed Christopher Goodman? is a quick read that mystery fans will enjoy. The multiple viewpoints of the weeks and days leading up to Christopher's death are all told in different voices, which keeps the reader from really connecting with one character. Give this book to fans of mystery or those wanting a quick read.

This book was OK. Nothing much really happened and things got interesting at the end. I liked the different perspectives Buti feel like the way they talked was weird. It took too long for the reader to figure out who killed Christopher and then finding out I was lie "oh that's all that happened?" I thought it was going to be more intense. But I enjoyed the read. It was really quick. Finished in 2 days.

A fast-paced read that fell flat on every level. Not my cup of tea.

This will go live on my blog on March 9. Kellyvision.wordpress.com

This is (based on) a true story. When the author was in high school, a classmate of his was murdered. This is his attempt to come to terms with it.

I'm not sure how much of the book is true; it probably doesn't matter. Most people probably have a similar story about high school classmates--maybe they died in a car accident instead, but most of us know at least one person who died well before they should have. And most of us probably wonder whether we could've done something to prevent it.

I imagine it's even worse in this case, where the death was so senseless and tragic, and where the reader can see so many points where the outcome would've been different if just one thing had been changed.

This story will sit with me for a while, as will its characters.

What happens when a friend, or acquaintance, or someone you once knew, is suddenly out of your life and you feel like maybe you could have stopped it?

Christopher Goodman is well liked and charming to a number of kids at his school. So when he's found shot to death after a town festival, a group of kids think back about how they interacted with him before and right up to the fateful night another person killed him. Told through multiple perspectives, the last moments of Christopher Goodman are explored through the eyes of others, who question their own culpability through the choices they made.

The good news is that I thought Wolf did a really good job of capturing teenagehood and the relationships that can build at that age. This group of kids all come together through various circumstances, as few of them are actually 'friends'. But I thought it was a pretty good portrayal of the kinds of stupid stuff teens can get into, and how it feels like that moment will last forever. All of the kids were pretty standard (the awkward boy with a crush, his best friend who has been embarrassing him as time has gone on, the tough kid who is dealing with a sick mom, etc), but I liked them all pretty okay. I also liked that we got to see the perspective of the killer, just a kid himself who has been dealt a really terrible hand in life. While Wolf by no means tries to excuse the horrible thing this kid does, I really appreciated that we saw his life too, and saw that sometimes people who make these destructive decisions have been damaged and worn down far before the moment of violence. I think that I just had a harder time with some of the devices that Wolf used in telling the story. I don't know if it was the formatting that I had with this ARC, but sometimes the perspective would be shared by multiple people and it was really hard to figure out what was going on, who was saying what, and how time and space were moving. I think that if these moments, and there were a few of them, had been clearer I would have enjoyed it more.

I also feel a need to note that this was loosely based on something that actually happened in Wolf's life when he was a teenager. He did a good job of crafting his own story, and I think it was appropriate that he have Christopher's perspective be the most limited. We only saw him through others eyes, but he never felt exploited or cheapened or misrepresented.

Overall this was solidly okay. I wish that some of the narrative choices had been different, but the story itself was a fine one.

Ask anyone and they’ll tell you that Christopher Goodman is kind. Who would ever want to hurt him? The events leading up to his murder leave everyone in town feeling at least a little guilty. Told through vignettes and different points of view the story explores the lives Christopher was involved in and the moment when he was ripped out of them.

This book is not so much about a crime or the murder, but about the events leading up to it. About how everyone deals with guilt and grief and imagines if things had only gone slightly differently. However, even in that aspect, it uses too many of its pages on the build-up and not enough on the effect.

Who Killed Christopher Goodman? is too short to really accomplish what it sets out to. The six different points of view are too many for so few pages and none of the characters receive proper development. It’s hard to get attached to so many characters in so few pages, and with a book like this one attachment to the characters is paramount.

The characters are reduced to a few tropes. Pretty girl who is shy. Farm girl who is bold. Classic coming of age boy character who is awkward. Weird kid. Redneck. Troublemaker. The attempts to give them depth are there but they ultimately feel forced and we’re left with cast of characters that we’re not really invested in.

I don’t feel there is a sense of mystery leading up to Christopher’s death - it’s clear from the opening who killed him. The focus is more on how they all feel as though they killed Christopher in a million small ways. How maybe if they had said this or done that he would be alive.

Inspired by a true crime the story is still mostly fictitious, it had a strong concept and the theme could be powerful but with too many characters for its page count, it falls a little flat.