The furthest thing from Ben Blum’s mind in August 2006 was that his 19-year-old cousin Alex Blum, whom Ben was very close to and admired for his loyalty, his intelligence, and respectful nature, would become an armed bank robber in Tacoma, Wash. In order to make sense of this shattering event, Ben spent the following years researching and writing Ranger Games: A Story of Soldiers, Family, and an Inexplicable Crime (Sept.).
Unlike Ben, a mathematics prodigy and research scientist in the private sector, Alex had one goal in life: to become a U.S. Army Ranger, the elite, special operations branch of the Army tasked with complex, direct-action raids against enemy combatants. Alex achieved his goal, but on the day before his deployment to Iraq, he inexplicably decided to rob a bank along with two other Army Rangers and two men known only to the ringleader, all of them armed. Ben and the extended Blum clan of successful, educated people were shocked, suddenly caught up in what seemed to be a classic American tragedy.
“There’s no more American crime than bank robbery, with its antiestablishment spirit and history of flamboyant outlaws,” says Ben. “Though the ringleader of this crime was a charismatic Canadian, everyone involved were living out American fantasies and encountering the consequences when those fantasies came up against reality.” Alex accepted a plea deal and told the judge that he thought the bank robbery was a game, a kind of initiation training exercise to become a U.S. Ranger. Everyone believed him, and Alex served only 16 months in prison. Ben worked to clear his cousin’s name and planned to write Ranger Games with Alex—until “he finally confessed to lying to the family,” Ben learned. Alex had willingly agreed to rob the bank after becoming enthralled by a senior Ranger, Specialist Luke Sommer, with dual U.S.-Canadian citizenship, a dynamic cultlike figure who conceived of, planned, and carried out the crime. “We were all deceived by Alex.”
“Shocking events tend to look more predictable in retrospect,” Ben adds, “and Alex’s involvement in the bank robbery is no exception. After spending years thinking about his story, I can see faint threads of causality going back not just to Alex’s character, but to our family’s character.” The cousins’ grandfather served in WWII and witnessed the devastation at Normandy. “The image of war that filtered down to Alex included a dangerous edge of romantic lawlessness to it,” Ben recalls.
“Still, I think the most important factor is that he was in the wrong place at the wrong time,” Ben says. “He might well have become a great soldier rather than a felon if he had never come into contact with Specialist Sommer.” While writing the book, Ben interviewed Sommer in prison, where he remains. In addition, Ben talked to some of the bank employees on duty that day, and others connected to the robbery.
He also interviewed Alex. “I had no journalistic experience back then, and was terribly naïve about nonfiction,” Ben says. “I thought Alex would simply tell me what had happened to him, and I would render it into nice sentences. But as I began to encounter conflicting information and facts, working together became untenable.” He almost abandoned the project, but Jonathan Lethem, his writing teacher at NYU, recommended Ben to editor Bill Thomas at Doubleday. This led to a book deal. “I’ve emerged from [the project] with a new appreciation for the power of reckoning honestly with a story, for both the journalist and the subject. Alex and I have learned a lot from each other and remain good friends.”
Today, 3–4 p.m. Ben Blum will sign Ranger Games galleys at the Penguin Random House booth (1921).
