Met the End

Author (and good friend of The Mercantile Library) Holly Brians Ragusa will be discussing her memoir Met the End with D. Lynn Meyers.

Save my spot!

Met the End tells the story of Brians Ragusa facing the tragedy of her family’s past, and the reclamation she finds.

Brians Ragusa’s father was the first known victim of serial killer Donald Harvey. Brians Ragusa was 15 when a motorcycle accident left John Powell critically injured. For seven months he fought for his life, while his family waited and worried at his bedside. Just when Powell seemed to be staging a miraculous recovery, reawakening to the world in his long-term care facility in Cincinnati, his condition took a turn for the worse. No one could explain why. He ultimately lost the battle, but not to his injuries: Donald Harvey, a nurse’s aide, had been secretly poisoning him with cyanide. Harvey would later confess to dozens of similar murders, resulting in multiple life sentences; media reports labeled him the “Angel of Death.” The hell Harvey unleashed on his victims’ loved ones is only the beginning of Met the End.

The motorcycle crash, Harvey’s crimes, and the ensuing trauma her family experienced had profound mental and emotional consequences, forcing Brians Ragusa into an exploration of self, sanity, and social norms. For three decades the writer struggled to reconcile childhood memories of her Dad—a man of quiet strength, a union plumber and welder for General Electric, a club leader and Scoutmaster—against the sensational publicity surrounding his stolen life.

This stunning true-crime survival memoir honors the strength that can only come when we are most vulnerable. It honors the whistleblowers, investigators and journalists who brought to light the truth of John Powell’s murder, ending Harvey’s 17-year killing spree but giving those he left behind untold trials to endure.

Free & open to the public. Registration required for in-person program via ticketing. To attend online, register directly via Crowdcast HERE.

Copies of Met the End will be available for sale & signing.

About the author:

Holly Brians Ragusa (she/her/hers) is an interdisciplinary writer, speaker and community activist based in Cincinnati. Her poem “She Is the Shield She Wears” was selected in the national Jessie Butler Women’s Poetry Contest and appeared in the anthology She Speaks Up! (2020). An Opinion contributor to the Cincinnati Enquirer, Brians Ragusa’s other recent publications include La Piccioletta Barca, Tiny Seed Literary Journal, The Well and On Being Mindful Poetry Project, Inside Out: A Trans Artist Project, and Earth Journal. She serves a range of nonprofits and lives in historic Over-the-Rhine, sharing space with her husband, mother, three cats, one dog, and (sometimes) two grown children. Her passions also include moon-gazing, seeking meaning, and mustard. hbragusa.com