JENNIFER THALASINOS lay motionless across the altar steps, her head and upper body covered by a white prayer shawl. Around her, the Shiloh Messianic congregation, eighty or ninety strong, sang and prayed. Worshippers turned toward Jerusalem, their arms raised. The pastor, Bruce Dowell, strummed a guitar and, in a warm baritone, sang, “These are the final days.” The shawl that covered Thalasinos had belonged to her husband, Nicholas. He and thirteen others were killed by gunfire in the December 2nd attack on a county workers’ holiday party in San Bernardino, California.
Nicholas Thalasinos was fifty-two. He was a restaurant inspector who, according to his widow, loved Godzilla— he once took his two sons to a Godzilla convention in Chicago. Raised in New Jersey, Thalasinos had been a county health inspector in…
You're reading a preview of
The New Yorker (Digital) - 1 Issue, February 22, 2016