Ballad of Jacob Peck

Shortlisted, Democracy 250 Atlantic Book Award for Historical WritingOn a frigid February evening in 1805, Amos Babcock brutally murdered Mercy Hall. Believing that he was being instructed by God, Babcock stabbed and disembowelled his own sister, before dumping her lifeless body in a rural New Brunswick snowbank. The Ballad of Jacob Peck is the tragic and fascinating story of how isolation, duplicity, and religious mania turned impoverished, hard-working people violent, leading to a murder and an execution. Babcock was hanged for the murder of his sister, but in her meticulously researched book, Debra Komar shows that itinerant preacher Jacob Peck should have swung right beside him. The mystery lies not in the whodunit, but rather in a lingering question: should Jacob Peck, whose incendiary sermons directly contributed to the killing, have been charged with the murder of Mercy Hall? In this epic saga, media accounts of what happened in the aftermath of the murder have taken on a life all their own, one built of half-truths, conjecture, and narrative devices designed to titillate, if not inform. A forensic investigation of a crime from the Canadian frontier, the tale of Jacob Peck, Amos Babcock, and Mercy Hall remains as controversial and riveting today as it was more than two hundred years ago.

"[R]ich, feisty prose . . . Komar has produced a grippingly good account of this notorious chapter in maritime history, one chockablock with intriguing side characters who -- with names such as Dorcas Babcock, Hezekiah King and Mercy Hall -- wouldn't be out of place in a Dickens novel (had he been around to write one). ... The compelling character portraits with which Komar fleshes out this gruesome central event build a vivid sense of the social and political realities of the day. ... Tempting as it is to view The Ballad of Jacob Peck as CSI for the archivist set, the questions it raises, and which Komar explores with such energy and aplomb, are ultimately philosophic and legal ones; ones necessarily resolved in a class or courtroom, not a laboratory." - Emily Donaldson - National Post - 20130503, "Constructing The Ballad of Jacob Peck as though she's a prosecutor -- dividing chapters with terms such as Res Gestae, scienter, et cetera -- Komar builds a case against Jacob Peck for his role in the murder to highlight how current law continues to struggle with prosecuting such accomplices. ... The Ballad of Jacob Peck branches out to not only document the murder, but contextualize the players and era, offering a history of early crime in New Brunswick, and legal proceedings and court in early Canada. ... Her due diligence also does what it can to shape the murdered Mercy Babcock, and other women of the time, into a person, not only providing a sense of justice, but also documenting their lives like no one cared to do at the time or really ever since. ... Komar's voice, skill and insight defibrillate regional history, providing a professional perspective to the underserved genre." - Mike Landry - Telegraph Journal - 20130503, "The Ballad of Jacob Peck is wonderfully written with historically correct information. It is a very fascinating and informative read. Debra Komar did a wonderful job with this book. This is a must read and I highly recommend it." - e-thriller.com - 20130702, "The Ballad of Jacob Peck, by Debra Komar, is a nonfictional account of family, religion, murder, a charlatan, and early-nineteenth-century Canadian law that is as riveting as a good novel. ... This book will appeal to a wide audience, including those with interests in true crime, history, law, and human behavior. ... By simultaneously corroborating and refuting old media accounts of the murder, Komar allows the reader to act as a juror, and provides all available information to decide the verdict." - Amy Z. Mundorff - Journal of Anthropological Research, vol. 69 - 20131114, "A potent mix of history and true crime. ... a well-told tale that nicely evokes a time and place, its people, and past events." - Quill & Quire - 20130702

Debra Komar is the author of The Ballad of Jacob Peck, The Lynching of Peter Wheeler, The Bastard of Fort Stikine, which won the 2016 Canadian Authors Award for Canadian History, and, most recently, Black River Road. A Fellow of the American Academy of Forensic Sciences and a practicing forensic anthropologist for over twenty years, she investigated human-rights violations for the United Nations and Physicians for Human Rights. She has testified as an expert witness at The Hague and throughout North America and is the author of many scholarly articles and a textbook, Forensic Anthropology: Contemporary Theory and Practice.