American Mother: The True Story of a Troubled Family, Motherhood, and the Cyanide Murders That Shook the World by Gregg Olsen
Finished – November 25, 2022
The premise of this book is intriguing, and it starts out very strong. Unfortunately, it was bogged down with extemporaneous detail in the middle which really detracted from my overall enjoyment of it. I believe it would be much better with some heavy editing. A lot of the detail could be left out or summarized instead for a better reading experience. I expected this to be more succinct and perfected since this is a revised and updated edition.
I wasn’t familiar with the crimes so all of it was new information which is what drew me to the book initially. The events themselves, the investigation and the trial are all quite fascinating. All of that occurred before I was born or while I was very young, so it was noteworthy to read about the news coverage and the public fear of poisoning from product tampering during that time.
The book centers on three generations of women and ultimately focuses on the mother and daughter while the grandmother fades into the background for the majority of the second half of the book. The mother we are primarily following, Stella, who is charged with committing the cyanide murders, seems to be very manipulative and narcissistic. Much of the book centers around her family life growing up and then as a mother herself. There was significant trauma and abuse throughout each generation which I believe was included to help us understand why Stella and her family behaved the way they did. But the author includes so much detail about the family that I wondered when we could get to the point. I also had trouble keeping up with the names of many extended family members mentioned and for what purpose. Sometimes one sentence would reference multiple people that were only mentioned once or twice in the whole book and in completely different sections or context. It was hard to keep all those threads connected.
I agree with many of the other reviews I’ve seen that this book started strong, but finished poorly. It lost me about halfway through and made me annoyed by the end. At one point, I sighed out loud when I saw a specific section of the trial transcript was being included after the entire trial had already been described.
My final rating is 2.5 stars which I round up to 3 stars. I would recommend it to readers who are looking for a traditional true crime non-fiction book where the author does not insert themselves into the narrative. I don’t ever skim books myself, but there are sections of this book that could be skimmed entirely without detracting from the reader’s overall understanding of what happened. Modern true crime readers might be interested in how the investigation was handled and the subsequent trial which relied heavily on circumstantial evidence such as fingerprints in library books since the events took place in the 1980’s. There is no “smoking gun” evidence in this case. The author leaves it up to the reader to determine who they think actually committed the crime and whether a poisoner is still out there or others should also have been held accountable.
Thank you NetGalley and Thread Books for providing this book for review consideration. All opinions are my own.
Stats
- My Rating: 2.5 stars rounded up to 3 stars
- Genre: True Crime; Non-Fiction
- Highlights: Mother and daughter family dynamics; jury trial; behind the headlines
- Warnings: Murder; poisoning; child abuse
- Author: Gregg Olsen
- Publisher: Thread Books
- Pub Date: November 8, 2022
- Note: This book was originally published as Bitter Almonds. This is the revised and updated edition.
- Other Books by Author: Gregg Olsen is a prolific writer of both fiction and non-fiction so the best source for all of his books appears to be the collection page on his updated website here: https://www.notorioususa.com/collection
- Author Website: https://www.notorioususa.com/
- Author Socials: Instagram
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