Book in works before gunfire, publisher says

— Gov. Mike Huckabee's decision to write a book about violence among youths was made weeks before 15 people were shot in a school yard near Jonesboro, Huckabee's publisher said Friday.

The shooting did not prompt the April 6 signing of the book contract -- two weeks after children and teachers were ambushed at Westside Middle School, the publisher said.

Huckabee and publishers Broadman & Holman Inc. of Nashville, Tenn., had agreed that Huckabee would write the book and had begun negotiations on contract terms weeks before the shootings, Broadman spokesman Robin Patterson said.

The April 6 contract was the final piece in arrangements that began with a multibook contract in 1996, she said.

During discussions, the focus of the book narrowed to the "culture of violence" on television and other media. That, she said, was months before the Jonesboro shooting.

After two people died in an Oct. 1 school shooting in Pearl, Miss., and a Dec. 1 school shooting in West Paducah, Ky., left three dead, the book's focus became violence by teens, Huckabee spokesman Rex Nelson said.

Patterson declined to release contract details. Industry practice is to keep such information confidential, she said.

Waiting months between an agreement to write a book and the signing of a contract was the experience of John Brummett, an Arkansas Democrat-Gazette columnist who has written a book.

Though critical of Huckabee's use of the school shootings, Brummett said he waited two months to sign a contract after agreeing in November 1992 to write his book.

Huckabee's book, Kids Who Kill, Confronting Our Culture of Violence, is coming out this week. A news article published May 30 about the book has led some people to criticize Huckabee.

The book's opening lines summarize the March 24 shootings near Jonesboro. The publisher's promotional material also refers to the shooting that killed five people and wounded 10.

Huckabee said Friday that the book deals very little with the shooting: "If you took everything about Jonesboro [that's in the book], it might equal a page and a third, maybe."

The book has 180 pages. Other than the opening few lines, the Westside Middle School shootings get hardly a mention.

But Huckabee's critics:

Bobby McDaniel of Jonesboro, a lawyer for relatives of two people killed in the Westside shooting, said Huckabee should apologize to the families and donate book proceeds to a Westside scholarship fund. Huckabee has received a $25,000 advance, a spokesman has said.

Democratic gubernatorial nominee Bill Bristow of Jonesboro, a McDaniel friend and whose campaign has received $1,000 from McDaniel, said it was shameful for a public servant to profit through a tragedy.

Democratic Party Chairman Vaughn McQuary of Little Rock said Huckabee should block distribution of the book.

Huckabee defender, Republican Party Chairman Lloyd Stone of Conway, said McDaniel and Bristow have politicized the tragedy and ought to apologize for that.

Huckabee said: "People need to read the book, and after they've read it, if they feel like these allegations have any merit, then they should make them, but until they read it, I think it's absolutely nothing more than political opportunism on the part of some people who I feel like are unfortunately and very tragically using the Jonesboro situation."

A relative of a shooting victim said she believes the victims are being used. No one should profit from what the families went through, she said.

Huckabee said Friday: "I don't know that I disagree with that ... I think when she reads the book, she'll realize that that's not what it's about."

The governor said he would have been criticized as insensitive and dismissive if his book had not mentioned the shooting.

"I would have been unquestionably criticized" for not mentioning Westside, Huckabee said.

He said it would have been "more outrageous and truly a matter of insult and disrespect to that tragedy" to leave it unmentioned in the book.

"Can you imagine that book being written without the reference? It would have looked like I was being totally disrespectful of the tragedy," Huckabee said.

Huckabee said that other than himself, no one in Arkansas has read the book, except an Arkansas Democrat-Gazette reporter who wrote about it in editions of May 30.

"You know the cover, the picture and all?" Huckabee said of the book. "The first time I saw it was in last Saturday's newspaper.

"You know when I knew how much it was going to cost? When I read it [$11.99] in the paper. I didn't know. That's the truth," he said.

Did he sign off on the promotional materials?

"That's essentially done by the publisher," Huckabee said. He said he knew little about the promotional material.

He knew the title, he said, but it was "frankly, not my choice of title."

"My choice of title, which ended up being the subtitle, was going to be The Culture of Violence. They actually came up with the [Kids Who Kill] title," he said.

Kids Who Kill is Huckabee's second book for Broadman & Holman. His first book, Character Is the Issue, came out in September 1997. It's seventh among the firm's current top-10 sellers.

Broadman is a long-standing supplier of Bibles, church supplies and texts for sale in religious bookstores.

Copyright © 1998, Arkansas Democrat-Gazette, Inc. All rights reserved.

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