This image is the cover for the book Case for Solomon

Case for Solomon

“A fascinating narrative” about the 1912 kidnapping of Bobby Dunbar and a haunting case of mistaken identity that took nearly a century to solve (Boston Globe).

In 1912, four-year-old Bobby Dunbar went missing in the Louisiana swamps. After an eight-month search that electrified the country and destroyed Bobby’s parents, the boy was found, filthy and hardly recognizable. A wandering piano tuner was arrested and charged with kidnapping—a crime then punishable by death.

But when a destitute single mother from North Carolina came forward to claim the boy as her son, not the lost Bobby Dunbar, the case became a high-pitched battle over custody—and identity—that divided the South. A gripping historical mystery, A Case for Solomon chronicles the epic century-long effort to unravel the startling truth.

Tal McThenia, Margaret Dunbar Cutright

Tal McThenia is a freelance writer who reported and wrote The Ghost of Bobby Dunbar, a one-hour radio documentary for the acclaimed public radio series This American Life. He has received residencies at the ShenanArt’s Playwrights’ Workshop and the MacDowell Colony. He lives in New York.

Simon & Schuster