On November 5, 2017, “a country church in the middle of nowhere,” in the words of Joe Holley, became the site of the worst mass shooting in Texas history and the worst church shooting in American history. Holley, a columnist for the Houston Chronicle, was in Austin when he heard the news. Instead of driving home, he took Highway 87 to Sutherland Springs, an unincorporated community 21 miles east of San Antonio. He joined a crowd of police, aid workers, mourners, rubberneckers, politicians, and fellow journalists at the grisly scene where, a few hours earlier, 26 worshippers were killed and 20 were wounded.
Holley’s journalistic instincts kicked in, but unlike fellow reporters—including his son Peter, who writes for the Washington Post—he lingered long after the first week. Sensitive to the intrusiveness of his trade, he listened patiently and gained the trust of the traumatized survivors. In his new book, Sutherland Springs, these survivors become more than mere statistics. They are working-class folk—many trailed by troubled histories with alcohol, drugs, failed marriages, combat trauma, or prison—who found redemption and community in a rural religious sanctuary. The challenge for Holley, an outsider from the big city, is to describe a place he calls “nondescript.” But everyone has a story, and every place is fascinating if you’re curious, patient, and thorough. Through persistent immersive journalism, Holley has produced a heart-rending work of extraordinary empathy.
There were fewer than 50 worshippers on a typical Sunday at the proudly fundamentalist First Baptist Church of Sutherland Springs (the congregation has doubled since the shooting). Holley places its gun-toting pastor, Frank Pomeroy, who struggled with alcoholism and spent time in prison for assault and battery before finding the church, within the tradition of frontier preachers. On the day of the shooting, Pomeroy happened to be in Oklahoma City for a training session by the National Rifle Association to qualify him to teach gun handling in a Christian youth camp. His daughter, Annabelle, was among those killed. He hurried home to tend to the remnants of his devastated flock.
