Blood, Justice & The Coley Brothers: Reckoning with a Family’s Past

 Blood, Justice & The Coley Brothers: Reckoning with a Family’s Past

Some stories feel distant, tucked away in dusty archives. Others hit closer to home. My book, Blood, Justice & The Coley Brothers, is one of the latter. It is a true-crime account rooted in my own family history. An infamous case that haunted rural North Carolina in the winter of 1893 into 1894.

In the summer of 1892, a Jewish peddler was found brutally murdered in the woods of Franklin County. The crime shocked the region, and suspicion quickly fell on two local brothers: Thomas and Calvin Coley. What followed was a trial that consumed two counties, a case that revealed not only the chilling details of the murder itself, but also the deep currents of prejudice, poverty, and desperation that marked the post-Reconstruction South.

Over a century later, I found myself drawn back to this story—not just as a writer, but as a distant cousin of the accused. In writing Blood, Justice & The Coley Brothers, I had to unearth a tangled web of facts, folklore, and forgotten history. More importantly, I had to grapple with what it means to carry a family name connected to violence, and how to reconcile pride in one’s roots with the darker truths of the past.

This book isn’t just a recounting of a crime—it’s a search for understanding. It’s about the weight of legacy, the forces of prejudice and poverty that shaped so many lives, and the uncomfortable work of bringing buried stories back into the light.

By writing it, I hoped not only to document history but also to show that even the most difficult family stories deserve to be told. Only then can we begin to understand the people who came before us—and the shadows their choices still cast today.