Green Fields: Crime, Punishment, & a Boyhood Between

by Bob Cowser, Jr.

ISBN 13: 978-1-60801-018-9

Paper, 176 pages, 5.5 x 8.5 inches

November 2010

A narrative reconstruction and reconsideration of the 1979 murder of Cary Ann Medlin, the author’s third grade classmate, and the execution twenty years later of Robert Glen Coe, the man convicted of the crime, the first in Tennessee in forty years. Reminiscent of the best crime writing of Capote, Didion and Baldwin.

Bob Cowser, Jr. was born in New Haven, Connecticut, and grew up in rural west Tennessee, where his parents worked as college English teachers. He graduated summa cum laude from Loyola-New Orleans in 1992 with majors in English and Print Journalism, then earned a Master's in English at Marquette University in 1994 and a PhD in creative writing from the University of Nebraska in 1998. He is Associate Professor of English at St. Lawrence University, where he teaches courses in nonfiction writing and later American literature, and an adjunct member of the faculty of Ashland University's Low-Residency Master of Fine Arts program. He also serves as associate editor of River Teeth: A Journal of Nonfiction Narrative. Cowser lives on the Grasse River in Canton, NY with his wife, Candace, and their sons Jackson and Mason.