Every Knee Shall Bow

In Every Knee Shall Bow, award-winning journalist Jess Walter takes the reader on a harrowing voyage from the homespun Iowa childhoods of Randy and Vicki Weaver to the shoot-out in which a decorated deputy U.S. marshal, the Weavers' fourteen-year-old son, Sammy, and their dog Striker were killed. He leads the reader moment by moment through the siege in which Vicki Weaver was fatally shot as she stood in the doorway of their cabin, her infant daughter in her arms. For in the deadly standoff on Ruby Ridge lie the racism, violence, religious intolerance, paranoia, hatred of government, and government abuse that continue to erupt in places like Waco and Oklahoma City. Drawing on interviews with the Weaver family and others, Walter traces the paths that led the Weavers to their confrontation with federal agents and the government to treating a family like a gang of criminals. With rare and remarkable insight, he takes us inside the minds of the Weavers and the federal agents and lays bare the truth behind the allegations of a cover-up. Every Knee Shall Bow tells the compelling, never-before-told story of undercover informants, blustery Green Berets, and the self-styled "gunfighter"-lawyer Gerry Spence, who brought his bombastic brilliance to Randy Weaver's defense. But at its root Every Knee Shall Bow is the story of what happened on Ruby Ridge, the tragic and unlikely series of events that destroyed a family, brought down the number-two man at the FBI, and left in its wake mysterious deaths, nervous breakdowns, and the unanswered question: Which is worse - racial hatred or overbearing government?

Beyond its central premise, the book can be read through the connected lenses of Nonfiction. Those themes offer useful points of attention as the characters, ideas, or world develop, especially where the book complicates the expectations of its primary category.