In the Garden of Spite
A Novel of the Black Widow of La Porte
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4.3 • 21 Ratings
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- $10.99
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- $10.99
Publisher Description
“Riveting! Camilla, high-five! Amazing work!”—Karen Kilgariff and Georgia Hardstark, #1 New York Times bestselling authors of Stay Sexy & Don't Get Murdered
An audacious novel of feminine rage about one of the most prolific female serial killers in American history--and the men who drove her to it.
They whisper about her in Chicago. Men come to her with their hopes, their dreams--their fortunes. But no one sees them leave. No one sees them at all after they come to call on the Widow of La Porte.
The good people of Indiana may have their suspicions, but if those fools knew what she'd given up, what was taken from her, how she'd suffered, surely they'd understand. Belle Gunness learned a long time ago that a woman has to make her own way in this world. That's all it is. A bloody means to an end. A glorious enterprise meant to raise her from the bleak, colorless drudgery of her childhood to the life she deserves. After all, vermin always survive.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Bruce (You Let Me In) takes a mesmerizing look at the murderous career of the real-life 19th-century serial killer Belle Gunness. In 1877, the 17-year-old Gunness is impregnated by a neighbor, Anders, in Selbu, Norway. After she demands marriage, Anders attacks her, causing a miscarriage. Months later, Gunness gets her revenge, fatally poisoning him. She continues to indulge her violent streak after she moves to Chicago in 1881. Her unhappy marriage to Mads Sorensen ends when she poisons him with a cyanide-laced slice of cake. The widow uses the insurance money she collects to buy a farm in Indiana's LaPorte County, where she adds to her body count, including her second spouse, Peter Gunness. Bruce plausibly reconstructs Gunness's mental state, including her chilling assessment: "There is nothing unnatural about me.... I am as natural as they come. There are just not many of my kind." Fans of fictionalized treatments of notorious murderers will be fascinated.
