A Book Review By Andrew Evans aka the Pickleball Librarian
True crime books often get bogged down with a lot of details, police reports, and legal material. Ernie W. Webb III’s “Goodbye, Butterfly: Murder, Faith and Forgiveness in a Small Kansas Town” flows nicely. It takes the tragic story of the 1991 murder of twelve-year-old Brenda Keller in Dover, Kansas and turns it into a powerful uplifting tale that keeps the reader engaged. It also educates how the investigation unfolded, features many Topeka citizens, tracks the Kansas legal process, honors Brenda, shows how small town America supports its people, and demonstrates the power of faith and forgiveness!
Webb does an excellent job of painting small town life where everybody is a neighbor and knows each other. He also shows what a wonderful person Brenda was and how so many people in the community liked her. This helps show the devastation the community felt when she was brutally murdered. In many ways, the small community of Dover lost its innocence.
Webb captures the grief and the shock of the community with very thorough research. I’m impressed by the eight-year process for this book. He went beyond researching legal documents and evidence by conducting over 75 interviews. He interviewed family, friends, neighbors, teachers, attorneys, and law enforcement personnel. He even tracked down the murderer’s friends from the time he was a young man in Oklahoma!
Webb wanted to give a complete picture by sharing many different perspectives on the character of the murderer by those who knew him at different points in his life. Webb also presents different theories of what happened through testimonies of those investigating the event. He did a great job of weaving everything together including other cases in the area.
On a personal note, I moved to this area several years after Brenda‘s murder. I didn’t know much about it until reading this book. It was an eye-opener!
It was also interesting reading accounts of the incident from people I actually know! This includes folks I knew from the legal field, church, a person I supervised while I worked at Washburn Law’s library, and a member of law enforcement who took years of martial arts training from me with his daughter. I still remember how he stressed the importance of those classes. He was genuinely concerned about her ability to defend herself if she ever needed to. “There’s a lot of bad people out there.” I imagine it was Brenda’s murder that drove that concerned dad to classes!
I now wish I asked him more about that statement from over 20 years ago. Reading about what happened and his involvement, I get it! The world is not a safe place even in small towns.
As I recognized people I know, I thought about how easy it is for me to contact them to ask follow-up questions. However, I didn’t need to because Webb did such a great job of presenting so many different perspectives and theories! It’s almost as if he predicted any questions an inquisitive reader would have.
If you want to read a true crime book and see all the possibilities of what might have happened, how different people perceived what happened, and come away with a positive and uplifting message, this is the book!
Want to read more book reviews? Here is one to check out.
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If you’re wondering what to do in Topeka this weekend, consider visiting local bookstores or the Topeka and Shawnee County Public Library to pick up a copy of A Court of Thorns and Roses. Books like this remind us of the power of storytelling to build bridges, deepen empathy, and inspire change.
