Summer of Shadows: A Murder, A Pennant Race, and the Twilight of the Best Location in the Nation

Summer of Shadows is an intertwining narrative that tells the story of the 1954 Cleveland Indians (which would etch itself in history as one of the greatest baseball teams in MLB history) and the infamous murder of the wife of Dr. Sam Sheppard in their home along the shore of Lake Erie — which held both the city and the nation spellbound that summer. Both of these generation-defining stories take place in the final days of the "Best Location in the Nation," the nickname for the Cleveland of the 1950s, which truly was one of the great and most influential cities in America. These two parallel tragedies harbinger an onslaught of adversity that dragged Cleveland from its lofty standing as a leading American city to one with a bleak — even comic — reputation.