If I Am Coming To Your Town, Something Terrible Has Happened: The Life and Times of a Domestic War Correspondent
If I Am Coming to Your Town, Something Terrible Has Happened offers one journalist’s version of the truth about how we ended up here and how nasty, sad, and disturbing it really is. This is the real, unvarnished history whose first draft was written in the same chaotic and roughshod way that it always has been—by some weary reporter just trying to figure shit out.
But this isn’t just a story about Justin Glawe and his experiences as a domestic war correspondent. It’s about how the things we love—or thought we loved—can break us. From long-forgotten deaths in his Midwestern hometown and far northern Minnesota, through the ravages of endless police killings, to the border and its desperate migrants, in small towns torn apart by spree killings, at the Vegas massacre, the Dallas massacre, Ferguson, and through the stories of corrupt politicians and dirty cops as reported from dive bars, cheap motels, and truck stops across the nation, readers of If I Am Coming to Your Town, Something Terrible Has Happenedwill see through visceral writing what most people never see: the seams of an entire country tearing apart in front of their very eyes.
But just because something breaks you doesn’t mean you have to stay broken. Things may be falling apart all around us, but we don’t always have to bring it home. You can leave your gas mask—and your Jameson—at the door and be human again.
AUTHOR BIO
Justin Glawe began his career in journalism in 2010 at my hometown newspaper, the Peoria Journal Star, writing about crime and daily life. From there, he moved to the Bemidji Pioneer in Northern Minnesota, where he continued to report on crime as well as issues affecting the Native American community, primarily homelessness. After a brief stint in North Dakota, he set out as a freelancer in 2013.
He was in Ferguson for weeks following the death of Michael Brown and continued writing about police shootings across the country for the next two years before switching to covering national news events for The Daily Beast, VICE, Esquire, and others. In 2014, he moved to Chicago and covered violence and police shootings — in addition to writing about my beloved Chicago Cubs — before moving to Texas in 2016, where he covered immigration and the border extensively, often reporting from Juárez and El Paso.
He currently lives in Savannah, Georgia, where he continues to report on immigration, efforts to interfere in U.S. elections, and other issues related to democratic backsliding, as well as the issue of Gullah-Geechee land loss.
In his spare time, he leads his band, the Savannah Morning Blues.
