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

by James Whitfield Thomson

Overview

“Haunting and heartfelt...meticulously recounted with powerful suspense and hard-earned wisdom.” —Robert Kolker, author of Hidden Valley Road

A propulsive and “deeply human” (The Minnesota Star Tribune) 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 during 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.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781668062869
Publisher:	Avid Reader Press / Simon & Schuster
Publication date:	03/25/2025
Pages:	304
Product dimensions:	6.10(w) x 9.00(h) x 1.30(d)

About the Author

James W. 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.

Read an Excerpt

Chapter 1 SEPTEMBER 1974

I WAS ALONE, standing in line at a Pirates-Phillies game, waiting to buy a soft pretzel and beer, when I thought I heard my name on the public address system. Just a flicker of consciousness, the kind of thing that comes and goes and never crosses your mind again—unless there’s a reason. My name is Jim Thomson. It’s a common name, short and easy to remember. Still, when I meet people, they often get it wrong. I’ll introduce myself and the person will smile and shake my hand and end up calling me Tim or Tom, last name Thomas or Johnson. It’s the kind of mistake we all make now and again. We get preoccupied; we’re daydreaming half the time, even when we’re looking someone straight in the eye. I remember my mother scolding me when I was a boy, saying, “You hear what you want to hear.” Which is exactly what happened that night at the ballpark, my name blaring from the loudspeakers, the PA announcer asking Jim Thomson to please report to the information booth, and I, distracted by who knows what—a girl in a low-cut halter? a sudden roar of the crowd?—ignored the summons.

It was mid-September 1974, a balmy evening at Veterans Stadium in Philadelphia. I was a third-year graduate student at the University of Pennsylvania, working on a PhD in American studies. Born and raised in Pittsburgh, I was a loyal Pirates fan and went to the Vet in South Philly a few times each season to watch them play. That night the Pirates took an early lead but couldn’t hold it. I’m sure I stayed until the last out as I always do, a lesson I’d learned as a kid when my older brother, Keith, and I left a Cubs-Pirates game in the top of the ninth and missed an improbable game-winning rally.

I drove home from the stadium and parked in front of the house. My wife, Connie, and I had recently moved to a small duplex in Narberth, a suburb on the Philadelphia Main Line, with our two-year-old daughter, Meg. As I was getting out of the car, Connie turned on the porch light and came out the front door in a sleeveless yellow dress.

“Didn’t they page you at the game?” She crossed her arms, clutching her bare shoulders as if it were cold out. “I called and asked them to page you.”

I was standing on the sidewalk. I couldn’t tell if she was angry or worried.

“Why? What is it?”

“I didn’t know what to do. I kept waiting and waiting for you to call.” Connie sobbed and covered her face with her hands. I ran up the steps and put my arms around her, panic in my head—Not Meggy. Anything but Meggy.

“Tell me,” I said.

“It’s Eileen. She’s dead.”

It was just words for an instant, the news of my sister’s death an abstraction. As if I were suddenly living in a world without cats or trees. A world without Eileen.

“How?”

“She killed herself.”

“No. She wouldn’t.”

Tears rolled down Connie’s face. “With a gun,” she said.

I let out a howl of grief and rage and disbelief, a guttural sound I’d never made before—or since. Our mailbox was a wooden case that had once held some weather instruments on my ship in the Navy. I punched the box and skinned my knuckles on the sturdy louvered slats.

Connie looked frightened, helpless.

“Did she leave a note?” I said.

“I’m not sure. I don’t think your mom knows much yet. Your dad’s still at work. She said she was going to wait for him to get home before she told him.”

I felt a sudden pang of conscience, trying to remember the last time I’d called Eileen or written her a letter. I hadn’t seen her in nearly four years.

“I better go call,” I said, sucking blood from my knuckles. Such a welcome and curable pain.

My parents’ line was busy. So was my brother Keith’s. Connie and I sat down at the kitchen table. She told me Mom had called from Pittsburgh around seven thirty. The conversation had been short, a blur of emotion and chaos that had left Connie thinking Eileen had been killed in an automobile accident. It wasn’t until she’d spoken to Keith’s wife, Alide, that she found out it had been a suicide.

Connie told me she’d put Meg to bed soon after, then called the stadium to page me. “They didn’t want to do it,” she said. “I don’t know why. But I just kept pleading with the guy until he promised.”

I thought back to that moment in the concessions line at the ballpark, that flicker of recognition. Why hadn’t I inquired about the page? Did I think only doctors got summoned? The parents of lost children? Or did I have some subliminal understanding that this message could lead only to heartache, to some life-changing event? Whatever the reason, it earned me two and a half hours of not knowing, a period of time when the most important thing on my mind was the outcome of a baseball game. I pictured Connie sitting there alone with that horrific news, waiting for my call.

I phoned my parents again and my father answered.

“Hello?” It was a question—one-half hope, as if this might be the call that would undo everything, Eileen on the other end of the line, telling him it was all a mistake; the other half dread, as if he expected another blow, some new weight added to his unbearable sorrow.

“It’s me, Dad.”

“Jim,” he said, relief and disappointment in a single syllable.

“I can’t believe this.”

“No, neither can I. I keep thinking maybe... if only I...” The words caught in his throat. “I’ll let you talk to your mother.”

“Hi, Jim,” Mom said. “Connie told me you went to see the Pirates.”

“Mom, I’m sorry. I should have—”

“Oh, no, honey, that’s all right. I had the game on the radio. It was a comfort, knowing you were there.”

The way she said it made me feel like a little boy again, and I let go and cried.

Editorial Reviews

"Toggling artfully between past and present, Thomson’s account of his belated search for the truth of his younger sister’s death is both adrenaline-boosting whodunit and tender family memoir. But what impressed me most about A Better Ending was its author’s honesty as he followed the twists and turns wherever they led and learned along the way, not only about his sister’s death but also about himself." —George Howe Colt, bestselling author of Brothers and The Big House

"James Thomson’s chronicle of his dogged search for answers that may or may not be findable lays bare a family’s evasions, intimacies, and impenetrable mysteries. A heartbreaking and mesmerizing book." —Joan Wickersham, author of the National Book Award finalist The Suicide Index

"James Thomson’s masterful and meticulous storytelling—part mystery, part elegy—is a gift for us all. This brave and unflinchingly honest book grabs you from the first page and does not let you go until the very last word." —Meg Kissinger, author of While You Were Out

From the Publisher

2025-01-17
A whodunit that hits close to home.

Novelist Thomson began work on this book about the death of his younger sister, Eileen, in 2001, more than two decades after her alleged suicide in September 1974. While attempting to fictionalize the tragedy, he had a sudden realization: There was no reason to believe the official story that, feeling remorse over an affair and guilt over two miscarriages, Eileen had shot herself in the heart during a heated argument with her husband, Vic, a police officer. One discordant fact about the incident gnawed at him: His parents had received a hopeful letter from Eileen, written and sent on the day of her death, giving no indication that she was feeling suicidal. Deciding he was writing about his own long-suppressed doubts about the case, Thomson hired a private investigator in Los Angeles (the death occurred 60 miles east, in San Bernardino) to try to get at the truth. What they find in the record and interviews of surviving witnesses shakes Thomson to his core. He begins to question not only the facts he had long trusted but also the flaws in his own character that made him trust those facts for so long. He sees parallels in his own history—alcoholism, adultery, domestic violence—echoing in Eileen’s tragically short life. These ruminations and doubts give this memoir a depth lacking in many true-crime stories. Parts of the book closely resemble that genre in tone and atmosphere and leave the reader guessing up to the climatic confrontation between Thomson and his former brother-in-law at a Seattle restaurant in 2004. The tortured, philosophical self-examination can sometimes feel like another book entirely, but it’s essential to the book’s arguments about the nature of truth and the dread of uncertainty.

A sometimes uneven but ultimately provocative read.

Kirkus Reviews