The Saddest Story

Gayl Jones has always written about obsession and violence. Now she's living a tragic version of them

Life imitates art" is a cliche, but that may be the best explanation for what happened to Gayl Jones. The writer made her name in the mid-1970s with transfixing tales of sexual violence and madness, stories of women skating the edges of insanity and the men who shoved them toward thin ice. On Feb. 20, a similar tale seemed to unfold in Jones' home in Lexington, Ky. When police tried to serve a warrant from a 15-year-old weapons conviction on her husband Bob Jones, he barricaded the couple inside their house and threatened that they would kill themselves. Three hours later,...

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