Customer Reviews

Bitter Harvest

5 star:		(61)
4 star:		(43)
3 star:		(30)
2 star:		(24)
1 star:		(19)

 

 

This was a deeply disturbing and at the same time a fascinating story. Ann Rule is an expert at building the supense without giving away the "truth" about what actually happened and who did what until late in the book. She manages to portray the characters in a way that makes you think you know them, and even as you begin to realize that the guilty party has done the unspeakable, she paints a picture of the whole person, and you find yourself feeling if not true empathy, at the least a grudging amount of sympathy for the characters involved. This was an emotional roller coaster and difficult to deal with at times, but it is well worth the read, and perhaps may at some point in time come to be a vehicle that could help prevent such a tragedy to again occur. Although I find it so hard to believe, that this particular situation could ever happen again, I just as surely thought this could never happen. I am sobered by the fact that it indeed can happen, and I will never again look at the warning signs of a dysfunctional family in quite the same way. Thanks Ann for your wonderful, insightfull book.

Most of Ann Rule's true crime books are located in the Pacific Northwest, but for "Bitter Harvest" she travels to Kansas to tell the story of a modern Medea who murders her children and poisons her straying husband. I saw the presentation of this case on Court TV, but this book goes into much more detail about the people who were involved in the marriage-from-hell that led to murder.

Ann Rule, a former policewoman writes about victims with a compassion that sometimes ventures over the border into cliché, but in this case, it is almost impossible to exaggerate the pathos and innocence of twelve-year-old Tim Farrar and his six-year-old sister, Kelly, or the ten-year-old Lissa who managed to survive the burning house by jumping from the garage roof.

On the other hand, it is almost impossible to feel any sympathy for the murderess, Dr. Debora Green. I really hate it when highly intelligent people turn to murder, especially those who use such horrible weapons as fire and poison. Really, Dr. Green should have been setting a good example for the majority of us who aren't geniuses. However, according to the author, this physician and mother of three had the emotional I.Q. of a two-year-old. When she didn't get her own way, she took to drinking, swearing, and beating herself with her fists. Highly intelligent or not, the arson investigators soon found the trail of accelerant that pointed directly to Debora's bedroom.

This is a thoroughly depressing story, but one of Ann Rule's best reporting jobs. For a change, the victims aren't beautiful but clueless young women who fall for the wrong man, and the killer isn't a sex-crazed sociopath. Dr. Green's case forced this author out of her usual writing rut, and the result is a fascinating look at a crime that is darker than most of us can imagine.

After hearing so much over the years about the quality of Ann Rule's books, I finally picked up this one and was prepared to be enthralled. Indeed, the story is fascinating, but Rule's treatment leaves something to be desired. She does provide meticulous detail, and the book certainly kept me reading. However, I found it finally unsatifying for several reasons.

Rule telegraphs too much too soon about who is going to be the "villain" of the story, and her presentation of the Farrars' marriage is far too black-and-white. For a relationship to have deteriorated to such horrific depths, both partners were surely more to blame than Rule seems willing to suggest. The spouse whom Rule paints as the complete victim strikes me as having been, at the very least, a fool to the point of criminal negligence. Yet, at every turn, the author inserts an excuse for that individual's actions.

Most frustrating to me was that hinted-at revelations about the guilty party's character never materialize. Rule drops teasers into her text that she never follows up on. For example, on page 27 of the hardcover edition, the supposed good spouse is "the last to know why" the partner behaves in a certain way, but that is the last we ever hear about it. Similarly, on page 322, a psychologist comments on "life experiences that happened...as a preadolescent" that contributed to the guilty party's mental state, and one is led to expect some explanation. It never comes. Ultimately we understand very little about who this person is--or why.

Because I gather that other books by Rule are considered better than this one, I may give her work another try. This book seemed lazy to me--substituting repetition, regurgitation of data, simplistic moralizing, and purple prose for any true insight.

Ann Rule is THE best true crime author. This is a good, very interesting book, but not one of her great ones. The element of Ann Rule's writing which I admire most, the reason I seek out her books, is the in-depth psychological understanding she brings to her descriptions of the perpetrators. She goes into great detail about their upbringing and the personality disorders that affect them. Although it seems clear that Doctor Debora Green, the subject of this book, has Borderline Personality Disorder, there is much less content than usual about Dr. Green's childhood, first marriage, etc. I also agree with other reviewers who felt uncomfortable accepting Ms Rule's perception of Dr. Green's husband, Dr. Mike Farrar, as an innocent victim. Dr. Farrar was at least irresponsible in having three children with a woman whose behavior was spinning out of control and who was abusing drugs and alcohol. After finding that Dr. Green had apparently poisoned him, and only shortly after attempting to have her committed, why did Dr. Farrar leave the children unprotected with his wife? What about Celeste, the unhappily married woman Mike was having an affair with? Her husband's suicide, and the casual way she and Mike handled it, seemed truly alarming to me. Could this case be much less straightforward than it seems? Was Dr. Green "gaslighted" by her husband and his mistress? Although Ann Rule seems quite taken with Mike and Celeste, it seems clear that this reviewer is not the only one with doubts. A very interesting book.

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.

Both doctors were an interesting study.. Debra was an amazingly intellegent woman who never developed into a productive person.. Mike was a man who had problems with divorce even tho he was desperately unhappy.. I think my question is the same as many who have written.. being a doctor.. it was hard to understand why he didn't insist on getting help for her.. the poisoning aspect was interesting.. who ever heard of castor bean seeds.. I marveled at how he suspected she was poisoning him and continued to stay with her so long.. of course the real tragedy was the death of the children.. Im convinced she loved them but killed them purely for revenge.. Ann is a wonderful writer.. I read everything she writes, tho her attept at fiction was awful.. she really invests a lot in her projects.. I think Ann has the need to understand the criminal mind..

"Bitter Harvest" is a well-written and absorbing book about a very dysfunctional and cruel woman.Debora Green is a doctor,wife,and mother who is a miserable failure at all three roles.She can't stay employed anywhere for long,terrorizes her husband and manipulates her kids until they are as messed-up as she is.When her husband (finally)decides to leave her she attempts to poison him to death and then burns down her home with her children trapped inside.She kills two of her three kids and then in a final act of cruelty and selfishness she tries to blame her deceased 14-year old son for her actions.This book is interesting if somewhat depressing.It's worth a read if you are a true crime fan.A note to people who read all the other reviews on this book:I suspect a lot of the negative reviews on this book that are supposed to be from a "friend of Debora's"are actually being written by Debora her-self.This is a tactic she employed often-writing notes that praised her to the skies and criticized her husband that were always signed"a friend of Debora".Prisoners in medium security prisons (and some maximum security prisons as well) almost always enjoy internet access through the prison library and some even have computers in their cells.Plus, it would be her personality type to want to know what people were saying about her and try to control what people think.That's my two cents anyway.

Another great book by Ann Rule, who is one of the best at delving into the motivation and mind-set of criminals with her unique perspective. Unlike some of the other reviews, I did not find that Ms. Rule was biased at all--actually I felt that she appeared to present this unfortunate story in a more balanced way than most authors would be able handle. Certainly both parties in this marriage were less than perfect, and quite obviously entered into this marriage for all the wrong reasons. But the 'average' person either learns to cope with what life has given them, or finds another way out, namely divorce. But this mother, which is impossible for me to understand her motivation as I am also a mother, decides to take matters into her own hands--deciding that no one would "have the children." She obviously felt her children were possessions of the marriage rather than the fact that they were human beings in their own right. Dr. Farrar does share in the blame ! for the sad state of their marriage and for entering an adulterous relationship. It certainly sounds like he has had time to ponder his actions and hopefully to improve upon them in the future. I also find it interesting that other reviewers of this book expect Ms. Rule to delve into Dr. Green's childhood in order to determine her motives behind this great tragedy. For many things in life, there is simply no explanation in existence that would satify the mind of a 'sane' individual. My children are the most precious people in my mind, there is nothing Ms. Rule could discover that would make me understand this sordid story. Nor do I necessarily want to. It would also seem difficult for an author to determine motive when the motive is obviously buried so deep into Dr. Green's mind that she herself can no longer find it. I highly recommend this book to all those other true crime buffs like me, who just can't put down a good book!

I read true crime basically, to try and understand what makes people do what they do. I still don't know if I will ever understand this Mother/Doctor. I suppose what makes this story all the more horrifying is that she had been a practicing physician. Ann Rule is at her best with this shocking, horrifying tale. Each time I remebered that this was fact not fiction, I was filled to revulsion, at times, totally anguished. The book is riveting. My heart bled for those poor, innocent children. All I can say is that their Mother was truly a mad woman. Obviously, Dr. Green should be buried underneath the prison which she sits in--alive! The sad thing about it, is that I don't even know if this woman was actually "sick." I don't think she deserves that much benefit of a doubt. Anne does a great job depicting this nightmare.

I agree with some of the folks on here who say that it came off as biased. Ann Rule has one bad habit of describing people as "handsome" and "beautiful" when they are most certainly not! Michael Farrar was/is geeky-looking, not at all anything to write home about.

Although I don't believe he deserved to be poisoned or his kids murdered, he is not a saint. He seemed more attracted to Debora Green's sports car and her income as a doctor than to her. He comes off as sex-obsessed (he USED "Celeste Walker", I think), and his need for "order" struck me as pathetically anal! He expected an antiseptically neat home with three children around.

Moreover, an adulterer is far from a paragon of virtue. Sorry, but Farrar just struck me as a guy who thinks women (wives or girlfriends) are there to make HIS life wonderful.

That said, Ann Rule did her usual job of telling the story and trying to get a handle on what makes someone like Debora Jones Green tick. I think Green was molested as a child, even though she continues to insist her childhood was idyllic. I guess we will never know.