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    Trell
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    Trell
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    Trell
    Audiobook8 hours

    Trell

    Written by Dick Lehr

    Narrated by Bahni Turpin

    4/5

    ()

    Currently unavailable

    Currently unavailable

    About this audiobook

    From the co-author of Black Mass comes a gripping YA novel based on the true story of a teenage girl's murder—and a young father's false imprisonment for the crime.

    On a hot summer night in the late 1980s, in the Boston neighborhood of Roxbury, a fourteen-year-old African-American girl was sitting on a mailbox talking with her friends when she became the innocent victim of gang-related gunfire. Amid public outcry, an immediate manhunt was on to catch the murderer, and a young African-American man was quickly apprehended, charged, and—wrongly—convicted of the crime. Dick Lehr, a former reporter for the Boston Globe's famous Spotlight Team who worked on this story three decades ago, brings the case to light once more with Trell, a page-turning novel about the daughter of the imprisoned man, who persuades a reporter and a lawyer to help her prove her father's innocence. What pieces of evidence might have been overlooked? Can they manage to get to the truth before a dangerous character from the neighborhood gets to them?

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherBrilliance Audio
    Release dateSep 12, 2017
    ISBN9781536685596
    Unavailable
    Trell
    Author

    Dick Lehr

    DICK LEHR is a professor of journalism at Boston University and a former reporter at the Boston Globe, where he won numerous awards and was a Pulitzer Prize finalist for investigative reporting. He is the author of six award-winning works of nonfiction and a novel for young adults. Lehr lives near Boston. 

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    Reviews for Trell

    4/5

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    • 4/5
      Trell tells the story of a fourteen-year-old girl who lives in the Roxbury neighborhood of Boston with her mother. Her father has been in prison since she was an infant, wrongly convicted of the drive-by murder of a young girl. Trell has seen her father only once a week during visiting hours. When a lawyer agrees to take on her father's appeal, Trell helps out at the law office, filing papers and learning about the legal system. As she learns more and more about her father's case, she has to confront the reasons he was convicted and find more help, in this case, a jaded reporter, to get the publicity needed to draw attention to her father's wrongful conviction.I'm not a YA reader, but this book held my attention and I didn't feel as though the author, a former journalist with The Boston Globe's famous Spotlight team, overly simplified things. Dick Lehr is telling a complex story here, one that addresses the crack epidemic of the 1980s, police malfeasance, why communities of color mistrust the police, what it's like to be an outsider, the experience of a child who has a parent in prison, along with the central story. Despite the central story being about gangs, drug dealing and cops, the novel was refreshingly centered on women, from the lawyer doing the work to win an appeal for Trell's father, Trell's mother who is strong and does a lot to help with the case while supporting her and Trell, to Trell herself, plucky but scared. Lehr based this book on actual events that reported on so there's a depth to the characters and events that comes from reality. I liked that he allowed Trell to be an independent character while not downplaying the danger involved in investigating the case.
    • 3/5
      I received a free copy of Trell from the publisher through LibraryThing in exchange for an honest review -- thank you!What a compelling and timely book!I wasn't surprised to find that Dick Lehr was the author of Black Mass. There's something cinematic in the way that he writes, and I think that Trell would also lend itself perfectly to a screen adaptation.So, the writing is great. I love the characters -- and the lack of romance in YA is a refreshing plus, too. It's clear that the author's done a heck of a lot of research on the subject.And finally, with issues of racism with respect to the criminal justice system and police responses... this is unfortunately a book that is very relevant to today's world.
    • 3/5
      I won this ARC from Librarything. The book's description intrigued me because the setting is near my home town, and I also remember the actual case the story was based on. Trell is a story based on a real life crime- the murder of an African American 12 yr old girl named Darlene Moore, who was sitting on a mailbox in Roxbury MA and was caught in the crossfire between rival gangs. The case itself made headlines and took years to resolve. A man named Shaun Drumgold was wrongly convicted of the crime, but was set free some 14 years later, due to some media investigation by this author, Dick Lehr, who was a former Boston Globe reporter.This novel is very much patterned after the crime, with just a few name changes. It was written for a YA audience and in the 1st person, from the point of view of a 14 yr old African American girl named Trell, the daughter of the wrongly convicted man. The idea to narrate the story from a young girl's perspective was good, but I noticed several inconsistencies. Lehr has the girl depict people and events in terms no 14 yr old would ever use, for example, she describes a few different characters' clothing by using the words "slacks" and "blouse". People my age don't even use those terms for women's clothing. I wonder if Lehr did any research in this area- it would have been helpful if he'd hung around some urban 14 yr olds. or read some transcripts from the early 1980's to get a more realistic sense of people's language use.The pacing of the events was a bit fast as well. Lehr had characterized himself in the story as an old curmudgeon named Clemens Bittner, a reclusive reporter who wouldn't answer phone calls and worked the graveyard shift. It took all of two pages for Trell to befriend Clemens and for him to start confiding in the 14 yr old girl. Again, unrealistic.I'm also not sure why Lehr wrote this story in the first place. I think it would have made more sense to write about the actual case and make it a true crime story instead of a fictionalized version. Lehr even used some names from the actual crime but switched them to different characters. So why fiction? Why not just keep the details the same? Maybe some legal issues, I don't know. Lehr does say in his author's note in the end that he wanted to make it appeal to a younger audience. I don't know if it will. I do think his writing is good, and I appreciated his good grammar (!) Overall, it was an interesting read, though I think it would have been better to keep the story real. I think I will check out Lehr's book about Whitey Bulger.
    • 5/5
      Trell by Dick LehrIn the late 80's in Boston a young girl is a victim of a gang related shooting. The police were eager to find a killer to try and clam the neighborhood. A man is flasly accused and sent to prison for life. Seems an open and shut case, until his young daughter (Trell) seeks the help of a newspaper reporter and Lawyer. She is convinced her Father is innocent and she won't stop until they get the truth.A compelling story of a corgeous young girl, fighting against odds to prove her Father inocent and set him free. Told through her voice, with gripping details I was pulled into her heart and mind. I felt as if I were part of the team, watching and fighting to free this man (falsly) imprisoned. Fantastic. I was hooked from the first page. I highly recommend Trell to all.*I recieved this book from Library thing in exchange for an honest review.
    • 4/5
      TRELL is a young adult novel written by journalist, Dick Lehr. A former reporter for the Boston GLOBE, in the late 1980s, Lehr followed the story of the murder of twelve-year-old Tiffany Moore and the subsequent arrest and conviction of Shawn Drumgold, a young man who did not commit the crime. Lehr has written well-received true crime books such as the powerful JUDGEMENT RIDGE, a look into the random murders of two Dartmouth College professors, and was co-author of BLACK MASS, an examination of the organized crime life of the infamous Whitey Bulger. One can't help but wonder why Lehr didn't write an in-depth look at the Tiffany Moore case. He had the background to tell the story, a reputation in the field that would guarantee readers for his publishers, and the talent to pull off such a book. Instead, he chose to write about the story from a fictional viewpoint and, in a Young Adult novel to boot.There is nothing wrong with Lehr choosing to try Young Adult fiction. In fact, he was brave in doing so as he not only stepped outside his normal genre, but crossed race, gender, and a large age gap to write a first-person narrative of a fourteen-year-old African-American girl who, in the story, was the daughter of the man who was wrongly convicted and incarcerated for the Tiffany Moore murder . In TRELL, Tiffany Moore is called Ruby Graham, and Shawn Drumgold is called Romero Taylor. It appears that most names are changed in TRELL, although occasionally a name from the case appears but as the name of someone else. It is difficult to tell how much of TRELL is what it is supposed to be - fiction - and how much of it is trying to tell us something that Lehr possibly couldn't tell in nonfiction format. Since Tiffany Moore's killer was never found, Lehr may be letting us know that there was a great deal of speculation about who did what and when. Once Shawn Drumgold (the now fictional Romero Taylor) had his murder conviction overturned and was released from prison, the case didn't end. But anyone who followed Boston news during that time period must have known that there was more to the story. It can only be presumed that Lehr felt he couldn't go forward with a nonfiction book on the case due to unresolved issues, loose ends, uncomfortable implications, and Boston politics. BUT, that is a presumption. In his postscript to the book, Lehr mentions how, when working as a reporter on the Tiffany Moore murder, he was struck by the strong roles that all the women played in real life: Drumgold's mother, wife, daughter, and his attorney. Lehr was so impressed with these women as well as the age the daughter was when Drumgold was arrested, that he conceived the idea to write about the case through the eyes of the daughter, a young girl growing up without a father, one she only saw on visiting day at the prison. How does Lehr do writing as a fourteen-year-old African-American girl? He is to be commended for this attempt as it is not easy to cross age, race, and gender to write as another. And Trell Taylor, the narrator of the story, is a gutsy and likable young woman from page one. The real proof will come when young adults read the book. Will it mean the same to a twelve-year-old reader as it does to an adult? Is there enough excitement? Enough for a young teen or pre-teen to relate to? Is it authentic enough? Lehr uses real locales and streets in Boston and its neighborhoods which will please local readers. He manages to make Trell come across as smart, sensitive, ambitious, and bold. Does she sound like a fourteen-year-old? Not always. If anything, Lehr could have thrown in some more colorful background. Music, fashion, hair styles, social and cultural trends - all of those might have given the book a bit more ethnic and age-appropriate flavor. Lehr does well with school issues, and Trell certainly has some, attending as she does a private school where not many students look like her and where she feels she is treated differently. The budding friendship with Paul, the young boy across the street rings true, and it helps to advance the plot as well as make Trell sound more like a typical teenager.Depending on the age and interests of the young adults who read the book, there may be sections that bog down or sections the young readers skip. The book is truly educational: there is a lot to learn about the judicial system, for instance, and about police work, and the role of the district attorney. There is a great deal about law (although it is the lawlessness factor that may hook more readers.). Lehr does an incredibly good job making the book accessible to readers of all backgrounds. One forgets about race (which, like everything else in large cities, always seems to play a role in everything whether it should or not), and Lehr's ability to write around race in a way is commendable. Some readers may critique the author's use of dialect vs standard English. Would Trell sound more authentic if she spoke differently? Possibly, but the fact that she attends a private school and is a very smart young woman seems to make it easier for Lehr to have her speak mostly standard English, inserting very little slang into the narrative. Of course, slang might entice and capture more adolescent readers, although it is evident that Lehr's intent was to educate and inspire youth rather than to make them feel comfortable.TRELL may create interest in young readers for future careers in law or as investigative reporters, or detectives. It may pique some young person's interest in social justice, in working in advocacy for prisoners, or in becoming a police officer or a politician (although the latter two professions probably wouldn't be Trell's choice.) Overall, this book is a very good attempt at using a real-life story to inspire young adult fiction. Lehr should be pleased with what he has done. One feels that there is still more story to tell, but by writing TRELL, it seems that Lehr is saying to us that this is all that can be said for now.
    • 4/5
      This is a young adult novel based on the true story of an innocent man convicted for the murder of a 12 year old girl. The story is told through the eyes of a 14 year old girl. Well written , easy to read and gives much information for young readers about the justice system.
    • 5/5
      This young adult book is told from the viewpoint of a 13-year-old girl named Van Trell Taylor whose father, Romero, is in prison. She was a baby when he was convicted of the murder of a 13-year-old girl in a gang/drug related crime where someone else was the target. Trell's mother, Shey, is confident that, even though her husband was a drug dealer and petty criminal, he was not capable of murdering anyone. Trell enlists the aid of a new lawyer and burned out journalist to find the truth about her father.Although the story is action-packed and suspenseful with a plot filled with twists and turns, it is also an insightful and empathetic study of Trell and Shey. The impact of having a father or husband in jail colors the family's entire life. Trell and her mother visit Romero in prison every week. Trell's bedroom mirror holds a picture of her with her father in prison on every birthday. She keeps her father's history as private as she can from classmates and copes with overbearing and assuming teachers with no true understanding of her family or life.As the story progresses, the reader becomes more and more invested in the lives of this trio. We suffer with Trell as she learns of her father's shady past and the evidence against him. It becomes apparent that, while Romero made some bad choices in his past, he is now a mature, responsible adult and loving father. The reader shares Trell's concerns and increasing hopefulness for her father's release.What blew me away was the author's note. The story is closely based on a true incident in Boston and the writer was the investigating journalist who broke the case wide open! Whenever I read the story of this type, I wonder how many men have been imprisoned (or in some countries, executed) for crimes they did not commit. Dick Lehr gives us some insight into the repercussions of these terrible events.Personal note: This is one of many reason why I will always be grateful there is no death sentence in Canada as improved DNA tests have shown the imprisonment of the innocent is not as unusual as we think.This book would interest anyone 13 and up and would be a catalyst for important discussions. Highly recommended.
    • 4/5
      I'm not sure why exactly but this book took me way longer too read than it should have. While the book was good I just couldn't seem to get into it. I did like the writing style of the book. I'm a sucker for a happy ending though, that's the only reason this got four stars instead of three.
    • 3/5
      This YA novel is based on an actual event. A young girl was caught in a gunfire exchange and died as a result. The wrong person was convicted of the crime and was in prison when a newspaper reporter decided to write about the killing. He found compelling new evidence and was instrumental in solving the crime - correctly, this time.It could have been a great book. Certainly all the elements of a good story were there. The author added a young girl, Trell, the daughter of the imprisoned man, to help the reporter look for evidence. This character was unbelievable and unreliable as the narrator. She was way too knowledgeable and sophisticated in talking about race, the police, and the legal system. Disappointing.
    • 4/5
      I love that this YA novel was written by a journalist who truly understands the nuances of the current climate. I am always thankful for additions to my recommendation list for student in the BLM slub at our school. This is well written and thought provoking.
    • 4/5
      Inspired by the true case of a Boston preteen’s murder and the false imprisonment of a young African-American father for the crime, this compelling first-person narrative recreates the efforts of the convict’s teenage daughter to exonerate her father and vividly portrays the allies and enemies she makes along the way. A highly engaging character, Trell has grown up without a father in her life, but by sheer willpower and a growing mound of evidence convinces a has-been reporter and a dogged lawyer to join her fight. Author Lehr is a former reporter for The Boston Globe’s Spotlight team (yes, that Spotlight team), which took on the case. The father was no saint, but he wasn’t a murderer, either.
    • 4/5
      I listened to this novel because it was provided by audiobooksync in the summer of 2021. I listened to it several months ago and have been on several trips, so be kind to any thoughts listed below. I'm trying to place myself in the book with my thoughts.Van Trell Taylor, her mother, and a host of other people get on a van every Saturday to go to the prison a few hours away to visit loved ones. Trell's father, convicted of killing a young black girl in a gang gunfire incident, claims his innocence. The incident is infamous. Ruby Graham was sitting on a blue mailbox. Gangs were warring and the front line appeared where Ruby was sitting and she was killed. The prosecutor had evidence that a black man wearing a specific outfit killed Ruby. Romero Taylor, Trell's father, was seen in the vicinity and had the clothing on, so he didn't have a chance to defend himself. It was an open and shut case. Trell's mother, Shey, knows that Romero committed crimes, but he would never kill anyone. So, they visit every week so that father and daughter can have a relationship. Van Trell believes her father is innocent. There's a new defense lawyer who has been helping other inmates. Romero hopes she will help him as well. Trell and her mother visit daily until Nora Walsh agrees to look into their case. Nora is pretty inexperienced, but she is stubborn, smart, and determined. Trell helps in her office and ends up helping with the investigation as well. She learns the mistakes that her dad made in the past that allowed him to be easily picked to be the "fall guy." Life gets dangerous, but Trell and Nora don't give up.Overall, I enjoyed listening to the audio. I found Trell entering into dangerous situations that most parents wouldn't allow, meaning the author needed her to have this freedom away from the parent to demonstrate how a case comes together with evidence and the danger involved. Trell's maturity may come from being raised by a single parent and the reality of a father in prison. I enjoy investigations and suspense, so this novel suited me well. For middle school and high school students, the novel introduces the corruption that can exist in order to appease the public as well as how drugs and crime can seem an easy, and only, way to make money in some neighborhood cultures. You see the struggle of getting the justice system to spin and for those without money to get competent assistance. There's a lot of reality. With this reality, young adults can see that our choices matter and doing what's right can help another person.
    • 5/5
      On a hot summer night in the late 1980s, in the Boston neighborhood of Roxbury, a fourteen-year-old African-American girl was sitting on a mailbox talking with her friends when she became the innocent victim of gang-related gunfire. Amid public outcry, an immediate manhunt was on to catch the murderer, and a young African-American man was quickly apprehended, charged, and — wrongly — convicted of the crime. Dick Lehr, a former reporter for the Boston Globe’s famous Spotlight Team who worked on this story three decades ago, brings the case to light once more with Trell, a page-turning novel about the daughter of the imprisoned man, who persuades a reporter and a lawyer to help her prove her father’s innocence. What pieces of evidence might have been overlooked? Can they manage to get to the truth before a dangerous character from the neighborhood gets to them?
    • 4/5
      I raced right through this book yesterday. It was a fascinating take on a real crime. The author note at the end made me want to do some more research, and wondered how much of the fictional reporter character represented him.