A Better Ending: A Brother’s Twenty-Year Quest to Uncover the Truth about His Sister’s Death

For fans of We Keep the Dead Close and The Night of the Gun, a propulsive and moving memoir about a brother’s decades-long investigation into the circumstances surrounding his sister’s tragic death--and his own journey to forgiveness and closure.

On a summer evening in 1974, Jim Thomson arrived home from a baseball game to the news that his younger sister, Eileen, had taken her own life. To Jim, his parents, and his brother, Keith, the loss was unexpected and devastating. Only twenty-seven years old, Eileen had been living in California with her high school sweetheart, Vic, a cop, surrounded by a circle of close friends and working at a job she loved. It seemed unfathomable that she would kill herself, but as the family gathered in Pittsburgh to say goodbye, more details emerged that seemed to explain the tragedy: Eileen had confided in her parents that she had been suffering from depression, and her storybook marriage had been plagued by bitter fights, infidelity, and guilt. When Jim eventually sat down with his brother-in-law to talk about the final hours of Eileen’s life, Vic looked him in the eye and explained that he had stormed out of the room in the midst of a volatile argument. Moments later, a gunshot went off. Sensing no lies or evasion, Jim believed him. He recounted the story to the rest of the family, and they got on with their lives as best they could.

Twenty-seven years later, with all of his family passed away, Eileen’s death began to nag at Jim. Now a writer, he wanted to fill in the blanks of her story and answer the questions that were plaguing him. What had the final months of Eileen’s life been like? Why had she not told him about her troubles? How had the infidelity in her marriage brought her and Vic to that fateful day, and who else had been a part of it? What other demons had she been battling?

Determined to uncover the truth, Jim hired a private investigator to help him. Together, they tracked down Eileen’s old friends and clandestinely obtained copies of police reports, which revealed that Vic and Eileen’s relationship--and the sheriff’s investigation that followed her death--was much darker and more complicated than they had imagined. Torn by doubt, Jim began a two-decade journey that took him from the streets of Pittsburgh to the hills of San Bernardino, leading him into a tangled web of secrecy, deception, and shifting stories that forced him to reconsider everything he thought he knew about Vic, Eileen, and himself--and to confront the chilling question of whether his sister had really taken her own life.

Told with the precision and pace of a whodunit and the searing emotion of a family saga, A Better Ending is an unforgettable tale about the love between siblings, the murkiness of truth and memory, and the path to acceptance.

James Thomson grew up in Pittsburgh and attended Harvard College on a scholarship, after which he served as the navigator of a Navy ship off the coast of Vietnam, then earned a PhD in American studies. After a brief stint in academia, he had a successful career in business. His novel, Lies You Wanted to Hear, received wide acclaim. Jim and his wife live outside of Boston. They have five far-flung children and eleven grandchildren.