Since Thanksgiving, I've been teaching Truman Capote's non-fiction novel, In Cold Blood, in English 11. The super brief summary: all-American family of four is brutally murdered in the middle of the night, there are no suspects but the parallel narrative structure leads us to believe that the two men who've been recently released from prison are our murders. They nearly escape and at one point are even in Mexico. However a lack of money and poopr impulse control leads them back to the States and into the hands of the police. They are caught found, confess (although they probably shouldn't have), are found guilty and then they are hung.

Capote complicates things in his narrative making us as readers connect to and sympathize with the main characters (and murders). He humanizes these two men forcing us to question the accessibility of the American Dream, the fairness of the American legal system and the