What a couple of weeks it has been!

First, I want to thank all of you for bearing with me these past weeks through the launch of The Idaho Four. I know you’ve been inundated with videos of me talking about little else…

But:

Last night, I was still wiping away tears after the oh-so-powerful victim impact statements made by three victims’ families in the sentencing of murderer Bryan Kohberger in the Ada County Courthouse in Boise, Idaho when I got a call from Jim ( aka my co-author, the legendary James Patterson) who told me that The Idaho Four had made it to Number One on the New York Times Non-Fiction list. (And, that it had also made it to the top of the New York Times’ combined print and e-book non-fiction list.)

I stopped crying when I heard that!

Getting to Number One has always been my goal for this book, partly because, as I reminded Jim, when we first teamed up he cleverly challenged me: “I know you’ve been on the NYT bestseller list before, but I don’t think you’ve ever been Number One before…”

That’s a dangerous thing to say to someone as competitive as me!

But I always felt in my bones that this book would touch people.

Because there was something about this horrific tragedy that spoke to all of us, including people who don’t care about True Crime. The four murdered college kids, Ethan Chapin, Xana Kernodle, Maddie Mogen and Kaylee Goncalves were so brimful of promise; so beautiful; so vibrant.

The photograph of them taken the day before they died, the same photograph that is on the book’s cover, radiated joy, possibility, and also normalcy.

And yet what happened to them was anything was anything but normal.

Read the full Substack article at Vicky Ward Investigates.