JAX MILLER - HELL IN THE HEARTLAND: Murder, Meth, and the Case of Two Missing Girls

ABOUT THE AUTHOR Jax Miller is an American author. While hitchhiking across America in her twenties, she wrote her first novel, Freedom's Child, for which she won the 2016 Grand Prix des Lectrices de Elle and earned several CWA Dagger nominations. She has received acclaim from the New York Times, NPR, Entertainment Weekly, and many more. She now works in the true-crime genre, having penned her much-anticipated book and acting as creator, host, and executive producer on the true-crime documentary series Hell in the Heartland on CNN's HLN network. Jax is a lover of film and music, and has a passion for rock 'n' roll and writing screenplays. Like Michelle McNamara in I’ll Be Gone in the Dark, Miller delicately unravels a decades-long mystery. Along the way, she uncovers a second story about a forgotten region. Like Brian Reed in S-Town, Miller pierces a broken rural community ensnared by drugs and poverty, and is drawn into the lives of people trapped within its cycle. She also investigates theories of police corruption, and discovers jaw-dropping evidence of negligence and mismanagement. Among the most well-known examples is that the parents of Lauria Bible actually discovered one of the two burnt bodies left in the trailer, a full day after investigators combed the scene. Miller chronicles not just the crime at hand but the deterioration of her own mental health as she puts her life on the sidelines in an obsessive quest to find the girls and see the case through authorities’ first arrest. She has dug for bodies, faced down the barrel of a gun, sat with meth heads, taken criminals’ confessions, and endured death threats she is still too scared to discuss. A former addict, Miller was able to get into the dark corners of a region ravaged by methamphetamine, speaking with hundreds of sources, many of whom remained fearful to come forward years after the crime. Miller’s docuseries of the same name premiered on HLN in 2019. HELL IN THE HEARTLAND’s exquisite prose is drawing early comparisons to Hillbilly Elegy and Educated from Penguin sales reps, and belongs on the shelf next to American Predator, The Fact of a Body, Say Nothing and other pivotal true crime narratives. Twitter: @RealJaxMiller Facebook: @RealJaxMiller