Multi-generational troubles cut to the bone with destructive intensity in Deanne Stillman’s Twentynine Palms: A True Story of Murder, Marines, and the Mojave. Two crimes in particular serve as an axis for examining lives afflicted by poverty, questionable decisions, and the violence done by men against women. It is a depressing, unsettling chronicle.

The Marine base north of Twentynine Palms is situated in California’s “high” desert. In these pages, locals and Marines do their best to turn that geography into metaphor by abuse of drink, weed, meth, you name it. Paralleling their effects, Stillman’s prose occasionally reels free of grounded reportage, as if recruiting the jackrabbit qualities of Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas. At times this works okay. Other times, no. Many details rouse doubts (Bloods dressed in blue, Crips in red; an NFL guard outruns a safety for a TD; locals watch “comets” (meteors really), etc.). Some gaffes suggest she has trouble reading a map.

Even so, if you have heart enough to believe that lives not lived especially well nonetheless can be tragic, this book will bring terrible moments to the page in a way that captures grief and provokes distress, bestirring your sympathies. ( )