Karen

Kelsey Grammer, an Emmy-winning actor best known for Cheers and Frasier, opens his memoir in a Colorado mortuary, standing before the body of his sister, Karen Elisa Grammer, who was murdered on July 1, 1975, two weeks before her nineteenth birthday. He uses a childhood trick Karen once taught him, closing his eyes before stepping into the harshly lit room so his pupils can adjust. Karen's body is desiccated and barely recognizable, the bridge of her nose filled with mortician's wax. He identifies her but feels that whatever animated his sister in life is gone. The book, he announces, will tell Karen's story backward, beginning with her death but meant above all to celebrate her life. He insists that Karen's victimhood is never of more value than the vibrant person she was.

The memoir unfolds in a nonlinear style, leaping between decades as memories trigger other memories. Grammer describes the project as both a prescription to heal his soul and a way to free Karen from the prison of his grief. A medium named Esther relayed Karen's request to have her story written. Early in the book, Grammer identifies Freddie Glenn as the last surviving murderer of his sister, who periodically comes up for parole. Grammer addresses Glenn directly, stating he forgives him because all are forgiven but cannot support his release. Telling Karen's story, he declares, releases him from the shared prison Glenn created.

Grammer had recently been dismissed from the Juilliard School's acting program when Karen was killed. When she failed to return home and a call from one of her roommates raised alarm, Grammer contacted the Colorado Springs Police Department. Detectives from Pompano Beach, Florida, where the family lived, arrived at the door. His grandmother, Evangeline, known as Gam, responded with a flat "I knew it." When his mother, Sally, came home, Gam blurted out "Karen's dead!" Grammer flew to Colorado to identify the body. A detective met him at the airport, saying six people were already dead and there would be a seventh. The detective told Grammer that Karen had not been raped, a kindness he later learned was a lie.

The memoir traces the family's history in layered passages. Grammer's grandfather, Gordon Savage Cranmer, grew up on a ranch near Fresno, California, served 28 months on Guadalcanal during World War II with the Army Corps of Engineers, and married Evangeline Lucille Dimmick after a spontaneous nighttime drive to Nevada. Both families disapproved. Gam's own childhood had been difficult: Her father was dishonorably discharged from the Marines, and her mother died at 41 from alcohol addiction. Gordon became the family's center, adoring Karen especially and calling her "Princess Coca-Cola." Their mother, Sally, had married Allen Grammer, a musician in St. Thomas, U.S. Virgin Islands, but the marriage collapsed, and she brought her children home to live with her parents in New Jersey. The family eventually relocated to Pompano Beach, where Gordon died of cancer in mid-June 1967 at 63. Grammer was 12; Karen was 10. They mourned together on a hammock beneath a mango tree and rarely spoke of Gordon again.

After Gordon's death, Grammer became the only male in a household of three women, assuming roles far beyond his years. Gam quietly arranged for their gardener, Ted Thurston, a Black Army veteran, to talk with Grammer after school. Karen and Grammer took a Coast Guard boating course and spent their first summer without Gordon healing on the water. They eventually met their father, Allen, for the first time, flying to St. Thomas. Despite the strangeness, Grammer felt an instant love upon seeing him. Years later, Allen was murdered by a taxi driver; a group of men had drawn straws to determine who would carry out the killing.

As teenagers, Karen and Grammer diverged. Karen gravitated toward the counterculture while Grammer turned to surfing, choir, and acting. Both graduated from high school in 1973. Karen insisted the family learn to say "I love you" aloud, confronting Gam and Sally until they complied. Grammer won acceptance to Juilliard; Karen enrolled at Berry College in Georgia at 17. She befriended her roommate, Ginna, but lost interest in school and left in the spring of 1974, returning to South Florida. Meanwhile, Gam married Bob, a boat captain and heavy drinker whose presence disrupted the household and may have driven Karen to move into her own apartment. Bob gave Grammer a Honda 750 motorcycle as a graduation present, a gift that carried him cross-country to jobs over the next decade.

After his dismissal from Juilliard, Grammer was consumed by grief over Karen's murder. He walked the streets of Manhattan from midnight to dawn and could not be consoled. His relationship with his girlfriend Jill ended. One hundred auditions yielded nothing until a chance encounter led to the San Diego Shakespeare Festival's apprentice program. At the Old Globe Theatre, artistic director Craig Noel became his benefactor, providing housing and significant roles. Grammer acquired Goose, a Malamute mix, who once leaped onstage to comfort him during a rehearsal of Hamlet when grief for Karen broke through. His career led from San Diego to Broadway, then to Cheers and Frasier, though grief dimmed every success. He acknowledges self-destructive behavior, including excessive drinking and cocaine use, as manifestations of unresolved pain.

The legal battle to keep Glenn in prison threads through the narrative. Grammer includes a 2018 letter from Senior District Attorney Jim Bentley opposing Glenn's placement in community corrections. He recounts attending parole hearings alongside Kathy, the young widow of victim Private First Class Winford Proffitt. Michael Corbett, the ringleader of Karen's killers, died in prison. The most wrenching section comes when Grammer reads the full police report. The testimony of Larry Dunn, one of Karen's abductors, reveals that Karen was sitting by a red Volkswagen Beetle behind the Red Lobster restaurant where she worked, around 11:30 p.m. Dunn and fellow abductor McLeod approached her. Dunn showed her a gun and told her to come with them. Karen's response: "For what?" She was taken to an apartment and raped by Glenn, Dunn, and McLeod. Glenn repeatedly stated he wanted to kill her. Karen negotiated with her captors for her life, offering to do whatever they asked if they spared her. Glenn told Karen to tilt her head back, then slashed her throat and stabbed her 42 times. She still managed to crawl to a nearby trailer seeking help. The man who found her did not attempt to help, and a couple in a nearby apartment heard a young woman scream and went back to sleep. Karen died alone.

Grammer's spiritual journey forms the memoir's deepest current. He describes a childhood love of God cultivated through Christian Science, then decades of cursing God while begging for help. At a revival led by Pastor Greg Laurie, standing on a baseball field with his daughter Faith, he asks Jesus where He was when Karen died. The answer comes: "Right there. Right beside her." On a later flight, he has a conversation with Jesus, who tells him the burden was never his to carry.

Near the book's end, Grammer and his wife, Kayte, travel to Colorado Springs to retrace Karen's final days. They visit her former apartment, the former Red Lobster now converted to a pawn shop, and the field where Karen was stabbed. At the wooden fence near where Karen crawled and died, Grammer presses his head against the wood, weeping, and holds her in his imagination. He tells her he is finally there. He closes by addressing Karen directly, acknowledging that writing the book shifted the balance of his inner life: Memories of joy now outweigh the horror. He calls Karen's story "sumptuous, rich, and alive" and promises the book holds her, holds him, and holds their love, forever.