PLEASE NOTE: This book may have an alternate cover. The following description is provided as a guide only and may contain text that doesn't specifically relate to this item. Amazon.com . . . .Fans of Ann Rule will find much to relish in Bitter Harvest, the tale of a brilliant Kansas physician who holds herself together well enough to put on a decent show for the outside world, but in the heart of her horror-struck family is a violent and baffling monster. She drinks, abuses drugs, spews invective, and even lights fires. At one point she learns from an Agatha Christie novel about a potent toxin contained in castor beans, and she starts poisoning her long-suffering husband. Yet until the final fire that consumes two of her children, they continue to love her and defend her to attackers. Rule tells the story with flair, conveying all of the heady feelings involved, but still the book has a flaw: Rule fails to understand the main character. When a psychiatrist testifies that the doctor is at a younger age than a toddler in her ability to process or sustain emotions, Rule writes, ‘That was a shocker. Could a woman with an IQ of 165 and a biting, facetious wit, a woman who had zipped through college and medical school, be a child emotionally?’Yes, she could. Bitter Harvest would've been a stronger book if Rule had shown us how. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title. . . . . . . . .From Library Journal . . . .Dr. Deborah Green was a brilliant, wealthy, married mother of three who was convicted of repeatedly trying to poison her husband and of killing two of her children in a fire she methodically set in the family home. Rule (A Fever in the Heart, LJ 11/1/96) proves once again that she is a master of the true-crime genre?she builds the narrative from Green's days as a student of superior intelligence through her years in an increasingly unhappy marriage to her physician husband. Rule carefully chronicles Green's bizarre behavior and takes the reader through the arson investigation as well as Green's husband's illnesses, surgeries, and attempt to rebuild his life with his remaining child, who escaped the fire. Peppered throughout the narrative are quotes from Green herself, which expose her twisted thinking and her attempts to rationalize her behavior. An outstanding chronicle of a crime investigation as well as a riveting profile of a brilliant mind and empty soul. . . . .-?Christine A. Moesch, Buffalo & Erie County P.L., N.Y. . . . .Copyright 1998 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.
