Jeff Benedict

“All Susette Kelo wanted out of life was a place to call her own – a place to start over after an unsatisfying marriage.  When, at age 40, she bought her first home – a pink, ramshackle Victorian on the waterfront in New London, Connecticut – she thought that her dream had come true.

She was wrong.  Months after Susette moved in, Pfizer Inc. announced plans to build a global headquarters next door to her neighborhood.  The City of New London desperate to revive its depressed economy, planned to raze Susette’s neighborhood to make way for a hotel, offices, a spa and upscale housing that would complement the Pfizer development.  Shocked Susette and her neighbors refused to sell.  So the city used its eminent domain power to condemn their homes.  That launched a bitter, personal battle between homeowners and local government that rose all the way to the U.S. Supreme Court.  And it resulted in perhaps the most controversial ruling since Roe v. Wade.

Benedict takes us behind the case and tells an intimate, gripping account of the people on all sides of this dispute.  In a true account that reads like a novel, this story takes readers on a fast-paced, emotional roller coaster with unexpected twists and turns.”