Author of book on Patty Hearst coming to Naperville

The incredible story of Patty Hearst's 1974 kidnapping is stranger than fiction, and all the astonishing details are revealed in Jeffrey Toobin's new book, "American Heiress: The Wild Saga of the Kidnapping, Crimes and Trial of Patty Hearst."

Toobin, a staff writer for The New Yorker magazine, legal analyst for CNN, and best-selling author, explores the exploits of Hearst's adventure and its place in American culture.

Toobin will discuss his new book at an Anderson's Bookshop event at 7 p.m. Monday, Aug. 15, at North Central College's Meiley-Swallow Hall, 31 S. Ellsworth, Naperville. Former federal prosecutor Dan Purdom, an attorney with the Chicago-based firm Hinshaw & Culbertson, will serve as the event moderator.

Tickets are available with the purchase of the book at Anderson's Bookshop, 123 W. Jefferson Ave., Naperville. Customers also can visit www.andersonsbookshop.com to secure their book and admission ticket.

Toobin's book provides the definitive account of the kidnapping and trial that defined a tumultuous era in American history.

On Feb. 4, 1974, Patty Hearst, a sophomore in college and heiress to the Hearst family fortune, was kidnapped by a ragtag group of self-styled revolutionaries calling themselves the Symbionese Liberation Army.

The already sensational story took the first of many incredible twists on April 3, when the group released a tape of Patty saying she had joined the SLA and had adopted the norm de guerre "Tania."

The weird turns of the tale include the Hearst family trying to secure Patty's release by feeding all the people of Oakland and San Francisco for free; the bank security cameras capturing "Tania" wielding a machine gun during a robbery; a cast of characters including everyone from Bill Walton to the Black Panthers to Ronald Reagan to F. Lee Bailey; the largest police shootout in American history; the first breaking news event to be broadcast live on television stations across the country; Patty's year on the lam, running from authorities; and her circuslike trial, filled with theatrical courtroom confrontations and a dramatic last-minute reversal, after which the term "Stockholm syndrome" entered the lexicon.

Based on more than 100 interviews and thousands of previously secret documents, "American Heiress" recounts the craziness of the times (there were an average of 1,500 terrorist bombings a year in the early 1970s). Toobin portrays the half-baked radicals of the SLA and the toxic mix of sex, politics and violence that swept up Patty Hearst and re-creates her melodramatic trial.

The book examines the life of a young woman who suffered an unimaginable trauma and then made the stunning decision to join her captors' crusade.

Or did she?

Toobin is also the best-selling author of "The Oath," "The Nine," "Too Close to Call," "A Vast Conspiracy," and "The Run of His Life." The last book was made into the critically acclaimed FX series: American Crime Story: The People v. O.J. Simpson."