In the Evil Day: Individual Rights, Town Government, and the Crime that Stunned the Nation
On August 19, 1997, in little Colebrook, New Hampshire, a 62-year-old carpenter named Carl Drega, a man with long-simmering property rights grievances, murdered state troopers Scott Phillips and Les Lord at a traffic stop in a supermarket parking lot. Then Drega stole Phillips's cruiser and drove downtown to settle some old scores. By the end of the day three more were dead, Drega among them, and four wounded. Occurring on the eve of America's current plague of gun violence, this tragic event made headlines all over the world and shocked New Hampshire out of a previous innocence. Touching on facets of North Country history, local governance, law enforcement, gun violence, and the human spirit, Richard Adams Carey describes a community that was never a passive victim but rather a brave and resilient survivor.
About Richard Carey:
Rick grew up in Connecticut and is a graduate of Harvard University. He worked odd jobs, taught for ten years in the Yupik Eskimo villages of western Alaska, served on the board and as president of the New Hampshire Writer’s Project, and for thirteen years was on the faculty of the Mountainview MFA in Fiction and Nonfiction program at Southern New Hampshire University.
His essays, journalism, and short fiction have appeared in a wide variety of national newsstand and literary magazines. He is the author of four award-winning books of narrative nonfiction, all about ordinary people coping with extraordinary circumstances.
About his most recent, “In the Evil Day,” Booklist writes, “Carey’s tension-filled report of a small town’s terror is portrayed with surprising love, bittersweetness, and hope, resulting in a beautifully written and enthralling true-crime tale.” The book has gone to a second printing and been optioned for film production by London-based Island Pictures.