{"product_id":"9781439193259","title":"A Case for Solomon: Bobby Dunbar and the Kidnapping That Haunted a Nation","description":"\u003cb\u003e\u003ci\u003eA CASE FOR SOLOMON: BOBBY DUNBAR AND THE KIDNAPPING THAT HAUNTED A NATION \u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/b\u003echronicles one of the most celebrated—and most misunderstood—kidnapping cases in American history. In 1912, four-year-old Bobby Dunbar, the son of an upper-middle-class Louisiana family, went missing in the swamps. After an eight-month search that electrified the country and destroyed Bobby’s parents, the boy was found, filthy and hardly recognizable, in the pinewoods of southern Mississippi. A wandering piano tuner who had been shuttling the child throughout the region by wagon for months was arrested and charged with kidnapping—a crime that was punishable by death at the time. But when a destitute single mother came forward from North Carolina to claim the boy as \u003ci\u003eher \u003c\/i\u003eson, not Bobby Dunbar, the case became a high-pitched battle over custody—and identity—that divided the South. \u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eAmid an ever-thickening tangle of suspicion and doubt, two mothers and a father struggled to assert their rightful parenthood over the child, both to the public and to themselves. For two years, lawyers dissected and newspapers sensationalized every aspect of the story. Psychiatrists, physicians, criminologists, and private detectives debated the piano tuner’s guilt and the boy’s identity. And all the while the boy himself remained peculiarly guarded on the question of who he was. It took nearly a century, a curiosity that had been passed down through generations, and the science of DNA to discover the truth. \u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003ci\u003eA Case for Solomon \u003c\/i\u003eis a gripping historical mystery, distilled from a trove of personal and archival research. The story of Bobby Dunbar, fought over by competing New Orleans tabloids, the courts, and the citizenry of two states, offers a case study in yellow journalism, emergent forensic science, and criminal justice in the turn-of-the-century American South. It is a drama of raw poverty and power and an exposé of how that era defined and defended motherhood, childhood, and community. First told in a stunning episode of National Public Radio’s \u003ci\u003eThis American Life, A Case for Solomon \u003c\/i\u003echronicles the epic struggle to determine one child’s identity, along the way probing unsettling questions about the formation of memory, family, and self.","brand":"Free Press","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":47123369132272,"sku":"9781439193259","price":11.99,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0737\/7593\/9824\/files\/9781439193259_p0.jpg?v=1763757673","url":"https:\/\/shop-qa.barnesandnoble.com\/products\/9781439193259","provider":"Barnes \u0026 Noble (DEV)","version":"1.0","type":"link"}