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'The Third Rainbow Girl': How A Murder Investigation Tore An Appalachian Town Apart

In 2009, Emma Copley Eisenberg moved from New York City to West Virginia to join AmeriCorps VISTA as a volunteer. Despite the vastly different places, she found herself drawn to the place.

She connected with the people and the culture, but she also discovered the sordid underbelly of life in rural Appalachia.

It led her to write her first book, " The Third Rainbow Girl," a true tale of two women who left Tucson at the end of the sepia-toned Jimmy Carter years for a music festival in West Virginia. They were murdered before they got to the Rainbow Gathering in Pocahontas County, and the investigations and trials that followed tore apart the isolated mountain community where Eisenberg now lived.

The Show spoke with her more about the book and asked what drew her to reinvestigating these murders to begin with.

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Lauren Gilger, host of KJZZ's The Show, is an award-winning journalist whose work has impacted communities large and small, exposing injustices and giving a voice to the voiceless and marginalized.