Review:
"Theresa Cross was a toxic mother, but the maternity myth blinded, deafened, and silenced those that might have stopped her." Dennis McDougal, with his flair for storytelling and his eye for vivid detail, is one of the best of true crime writers. In this book he profiles a very dark character indeed: a woman for whom neither her life nor her fantasies ever got beyond her sad, narrow world of severe men, twisted religious ideas, beatings, sexual jealousy, horror fiction and movies, and obsessive housecleaning. She had several husbands, one of whom she killed, until she ended up as a single mother with two boys and three girls. Then she began to torture and kill the girls, one after another, as they became old enough that their beauty made her angry. Prepare to enter a closed-off realm of nightmare, when you read this one.
From the Publisher:
Among many other things, my department is responsible for watching the backlist and making sure that we reprint titles that need to stay in print. Without fail, every year since it's publication in 1995, the reorders on this title pick up dramatically right before Mother's Day. Every year we reprint it, just before Mother's Day. It's a great book, and I'm glad it reaches new audiences because it has a lot to say about the darker side of the revered role of the mother; and it "sells-through", which means the stores don't have to return it because customers buy enough of them. But somehow I envision these out of control computers churning out reorders based on the title alone," thinking" that it's a delightful little book honoring Moms. Maybe it sells so well be cause that's just what it isn't!
"About this title" may belong to another edition of this title.