INDIANAPOLIS — The book was a long time in the making — but one Davey Blackburn never wanted.
The pastor imagined any memoir he'd write would center on his journey as a 25-year-old embarking from South Carolina to Indianapolis with his wife to start a church and “willed it into a movement that turned a city upside down.”
Instead, one day changed everything.
The crime is well known, both in Indianapolis and across the country. On Nov. 10, 2015, Blackburn’s wife, 28-year-old Amanda, was fatally wounded during a home invasion robbery. Blackburn found her lying on the floor after returning from the gym early that morning. She died in a hospital a day later.
Police would later arrest three young men for her death, a trio tied to burglaries around the same neighborhood. All three are behind bars for the killing.
Almost overnight, nearly two years after arriving in Indianapolis with a dream to plant a church, Blackburn became known across the country as the pastor whose pregnant wife was killed while their 15-month-old son was in his crib upstairs.
Blackburn refers to the firestorm as a "nightmare" and "blur" in "Nothing is Wasted." The upcoming book is the quasi-memoir he always intended to write, but the story he never fathomed he would pen. He said he ultimately wrote it to show the world his path from pain to redemption.
"I want people to see themselves in this story and not get stuck," he said. "I want them to fall in love with Amanda and realize that she was the most amazing woman that anybody could have ever met."
Blackburn also wanted to chronicle how his faith guided him to heal, a long, internal battle that culminated in facing one of the men arrested in his wife's killing in the courtroom.
"I saw the kind of darkness my heart was going down into," Blackburn recalled from that time. "I didn't want that to affect my son and I didn't want it to affect me ... so I knew I had to choose to walk in that forgiveness."
The idea for a book began not long after his wife’s death, starting as a suggestion from other writers who saw his story on a blog. He dismissed their thoughts, wanting to wait until he healed from the traumatic event. His peers coaxed him to document his feelings then, versus waiting.
He followed suit, and “just began to sit down and write.”
“It felt visceral. It felt cathartic,” he said. He at first wondered if the manuscript was too raw, from sharing his initial feelings of hatred and rage as the killers were announced, to mentions of the blood on the brim of his hat as he drove home from the hospital. They disagreed.
He finished the manuscript in 2017. The trials for the three men halted its publishing until now. The extra time allowed him to include the letter he read during Diano Gordon’s sentencing in 2022, he said. Blackburn said he anticipates people will be surprised at how much he shares in the book, including entries from his wife's journals.
He hopes readers see how pain can turn into purpose, as the book title suggests.
Blackburn lives with his wife Kristi and three children 11 years old and younger. His and Amanda’s son, Weston, turns 10 at the end of July. The family is surrounded by kittens and chickens and their long-haired dachshund Henry.
"Nothing is Wasted” is available July 30.
Contact IndyStar reporter Sarah Nelson at sarah.nelson@indystar.com
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