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• Bitter Harvest
Ann Rule

Pocket, 1999 - 496 pages

average customer review:based on 173 reviews
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I can't help but feel a little sorry for Debora

I have read five Ann Rule books and I've liked them all. My favorite so far is "Small Sacrifices". As for "Bitter Harvest", my favorite character in that was Mike Farrar. The poor man with his ill health and dead children, struggling to keep together a marriage he should have given up on long ago. But I wonder if he is as innocent as Ann Rule makes him appear to be. I feel sorriest of all for Lissa, who is just a little older than me. But I also feel a little sorry for Debora. She seems to be seriously sick in the head. But she is very dangerous and she got what she deserved; nothing more than that.


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Great!

I really enjoyed this book, and felt like I wanted something very bad to happen to her, she was such an evil woman and ruined her husbands and daughters lives, as well as killed 2 of her kids.









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fascinating book about an exceptionally troubled woman

The true-crime story explored in Bitter Harvest is gripping and disturbing on many levels, underscoring the often imperceptible line between genius and madness, the curious combination of enviable professional achievement with a total disconnection from reality within an individual. Makes you wonder just how the human brain works. This was a fast read, very intriguing. Admittedly, the story is more interesting to me because I'm familiar with the setting and I've heard first-hand accounts of Debora Green's odd and somewhat antisocial behavior while she was in medical school and residency. I didn't notice any glaring flaws in the writing, but the story is so intriguing I'm not sure that I would have noticed. Rule does seem to be mighty sympathetic to Green's husband (an achiever who seemed to surpass his wife professionally, and who fooled around with a very attractive other woman while "chaperoning" a child's international field trip), but hey, it wasn't the husband who poisoned Green with castor beans, necessitating brain surgery. It wasn't the husband who set fire to the family manse. Though he's no saint, she certainly surpasses him in the hierarchy of bad behavior. This book left me concerned that mental illness is often overlooked, or at least minimized, in "accomplished" and professionally successful individuals -- a tragedy in itself that can lead to tragic results.


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Horrific -- But Not Quite Balanced --

I read this book (in German) over the weekend, and could not put it down. Fascinating! What it did was make me appreciate all the nice, sane people I have in my life -- even if they're not perfect, they're a lot better than the characters in the book. I did have a problem with some of the tale, though -- I did not think it presented a fair picture. For example, I thought Mike should definitely have made some other moves a lot earlier. How could he think that it would be right to leave his kids with a woman who was drinking to the point of oblivion, who had tempertantrums in public, and who actually tried to kill him? A woman who did not have any friends? ... And yet, I can tell you how he could think this. He could think this because HE had not spoken to anyone about the problems earlier -- at least not to enough people. He thought that to take the kids away would be to punish her too much, and he felt guilty -- either about the affair, or leaving, or something. What this book has made me realize is the importance of intervention -- as Deb points out in a statement included in the end of the book. It is extremely difficult to intervene in the life of another person, but you have to try. If someone is acting really weird, find out why. Try to get them help. Don't wait for tragedy.


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reviews: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, page 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, 15, 16, 17, 18, 19



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