American Taboo - by Philip Weiss (Paperback)

About the Book

Twenty-five years after a young Peace Corps volunteer was murdered and her killer set free, Weiss unravels the truth behind what happened on the South Pacific island and why the government suppressed the case.

From the Back Cover

In 1975, a new group of Peace Corps volunteers landed on the island nation of Tonga. Among them was Deborah Gardner -- a beautiful twenty-three-year-old who, in the following year, would be stabbed twenty-two times and left for dead inside her hut.

Another volunteer turned himself in to the Tongan police, and many of the other Americans were sure he had committed the crime. But with the aid of the State Department, he returned home a free man. Although the story was kept quiet in the United States, Deb Gardner's death and the outlandish aftermath took on legendary proportions in Tonga.

Now journalist Philip Weiss "shines daylight on the facts of this ugly case with the fervor of an avenging angel" (Chicago Tribune), exposing a gripping tale of love, violence, and clashing ideals. With bravura reporting and vivid, novelistic prose, Weiss transforms a Polynesian legend into a singular artifact of American history and a profoundly moving human story.

Review Quotes

"Beautiful, melancholy, at times even poetic. Besides being a page-turner, it is...heartbreakingly relevant." - Minneapolis Star Tribune
"[Weiss] shines daylight on the facts of this ugly case with the fervor of an avenging angel." - Chicago Tribune
"An important and absorbing story...thick with energy and polished with good journalism and a writer's touch" - San Francisco Chronicle
"An important and absorbing story...thick with energy and polished with good journalism and a writer's touch" - San Francisco Chronicle