The essay opens in February 2010, moments before a mass shooting at the University of Alabama-Huntsville during the biology department’s weekly faculty meeting. One professor, Amy Bishop, was unusually withdrawn, perhaps due to a recent tenure denial. As the meeting ended, Bishop opened fire with a gun from her purse, killing three of her colleagues and wounding others. The incident became a national sensation, as Bishop did not fit the typical profile of a mass shooter due to her age, gender, and profession. Later, Huntsville police received a call from the police department in Braintree, Massachusetts, a Boston suburb where Amy had grown up. The police chief, Paul Frazier, informed his counterparts that Amy may have murdered her brother in 1986.

Amy’s parents met in art school. Her mother Judy was a lifelong New Englander, while her father Sam was a Greek immigrant who became an art professor at Northeastern University in Boston. Keefe notes that Amy’s mother was popular and active in town civic life. Amy and her brother Seth grew up as academically inclined musicians, both playing the violin. In an interview with Keefe, Amy insists that she and her brother were always close. Seth’s friends remember him fondly, as kind and less solitary than his sister.