what I read last week

from here to the great unknown, all the sinners bleed

May 14, 2025

Good afternoon!

Apologies for the delay this week—I am in the process of moving and haven’t had time to write my thoughts down. Despite the chaos of the move, I read a memoir by Lisa Marie Presley and a crime thriller set in the American South by S.A. Crosby. Let’s get into it.

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From Here to the Great Unknown: A Memoir by Lisa Marie Presley and Riley Keough

From Here to the Great Unknown is a posthumous memoir written by Lisa Marie Presley. Her daughter, Riley Keough, finished the book after Presley died in 2023 at age 54. Keough relied on her writing and in-depth taped interviews to complete the memoir.

Overview: Presley chronicles her life, beginning with her childhood in Memphis, Tennessee. She admits that she was a bit of a “princess” living on the estate in Graceland. Elvis named a plane after her. While she had an idyllic childhood in some respects, her father had a long-time prescription drug addiction and died in their home when she was nine years old. Presley was there when he died: “I saw his head, I saw his body, I saw his pyjamas, and I saw his socks at the bottom of the gurney.”

Presley and her mother had a difficult relationship: “It was a one-two punch: he’s dead and I’m stuck with her.” Her mother exposed her to Scientology, which Presley relied on to help process her grief.

Presley writes candidly about her relationships with Danny Keough, the father of Riley and her late son, Ben, Nicholas Cage, and Michael Jackson. In her 40s, Presley began to struggle with an opioid addiction and started to drift in and out of rehab.

Opinion: From Here to the Great Unknown is a radically open memoir. Keough does a good job of weaving in her voice with Presley’s writing and recorded interviews. Part of me wonders if Presley would have included all of the material she recorded on her tapes, but we’ll never know the answer to that question.

While much of the book focuses on the cult of celebrity and larger-than-life details, it is ultimately about familial grief—a young daughter grieving her father, a mother grieving her son, and a daughter (Keough) grieving her mother.

Overall: I definitely recommend this book to anyone interested in the Presleys.

Rating: 3.9/5

Genre: Memoir

Notable prizes/book clubs/lists: Oprah’s Book Club

Page count: 304 pages

Audio: 5 hours 40 minutes (narrated by Riley Keough and Julia Roberts)

Movie/TV pairings: Elvis, Priscilla

All the Sinners Bleed by S.A. Crosby

All the Sinners Bleed is a dark crime novel set in 2017 amidst racial tensions in a small town in Virginia.

Overview: Former FBI agent Titus Crown has returned to his hometown and is the first black sheriff in Charon County, Virginia. A year after the election, a shooting at the local high school leaves a beloved teacher and his former student dead. “A teacher who had written a letter of recommendation for him to attend UVA had his brains blown out the back of his head.” There had been only two murders reported in the past two decades in Charon County.

As Titus investigates the shooting, he and his deputies discover horrific pictures of the torture and murder of child victims on the teacher’s phone, and another murderer pictured in the photos is still on the loose. Crosby follows Titus as he tracks down clues and tries to track down the serial killer (who has an affinity for scripture) in his town. As he investigates, the sons of the Confederacy plan a Charlottesville-style parade.

Opinion: This book has been in my “to be read” pile ever since Obama listed it in his summer 2023 reading list. The themes are layered—Crosby tackles organized religion, systemic racism, and child abuse. At times, this book can be challenging to read, as it’s about a serial killer targeting children. Nevertheless, I couldn’t put this Southern noir thriller down and would definitely read another book by Crosby.

Crosby excels at pacing and world-building. All the Sinners Bleed is action-packed and has characters with real depth. I also thought his portrayal of the American South was well done. The high school in question is named after Confederate President Jefferson Davis. As Crosby writes, “No place was more confused about the past or terrified of the future than the South.”

Titus narrates the novel in a solemn tone. He notes: “We all choose to be skeptics when the truth is inconvenient,” and “Sometimes grief is love unexpressed. Other times it’s regret made flesh.” Crosby clearly likes to write with metaphors. I typically find metaphors distracting, as they don’t always land. That is the case at times here—Titus describes the struggles of capitalism as trying to climb a greased pole in mittens.” However, this writing style didn’t bother me too much, and the metaphors mostly worked: “Memories, charged like electrons, ran along the phone line like nerve impulses.”

Overall: I would highly recommend this book to readers who like dark, gritty crime thrillers or who like shows like True Detective.

Rating: 4.2/5

Genre: Contemporary Crime Thriller

Notable prizes/book clubs/lists: Obama summer reading list (2023)

Page count: 341 pages

Audio: 13 hours 42 minutes

Movie/TV pairings: True Detective