Three Rivers Library is the setting of Thomas Birdsey’s self-amputation, the act that becomes central to his account before the Security Board. The library is significant not only as the place of bodily injury but as the origin point of a religious and political explanation that Thomas later gives for the sacrifice.

The Library and the Amputation

The available account identifies the library as the site of Thomas’s sacrifice but does not dwell on the act as it happened. Instead, it presents the event retrospectively, through the Board’s questions about why he cut off his hand. Thomas answers by invoking Scripture’s injunction to remove an offending hand, then rejects the suggestion that he acted to atone for his own sins: he says the sacrifice was for America’s sins.

Testimony and the Meaning of the Site

The library incident is recast as evidence in a formal hearing. A Board member asks whether Thomas told police that voices inspired the act; Thomas confirms that he did. His testimony links the physical sacrifice to the voices and to his belief that he had been chosen for a divine mission against an unholy war. In this way, the library becomes inseparable from the explanation Thomas builds around the amputation, even as the hearing subjects that explanation to institutional scrutiny.

Dominick’s Reading of the Record

The reader encounters the event through Dominick Birdsey, who skims the hearing transcript and slows when he reaches his brother’s interview. After reading further, Dominick tells Lisa Sheffer that he stopped at the passage where the Board had led Thomas to say he would slaughter a librarian for Jesus. Sheffer objects to the way the questioning was conducted. The exchange underscores the gap between the library as the place of Thomas’s act and the transcript as a later, contested account of what the act meant.