Customer Reviews

Facing the Wind: A True Story of Tragedy and Reconciliation

5 star:		(24)
4 star:		(12)
3 star:		(12)
2 star:		(2)
1 star:		(8)

 

 

How would any of us react if someone we thought we knew well, a respected member of our community, suddenly beat his family to death with a baseball bat? And how would we react if we knew he'd remarried years later and started a new family? As riveting as these questions may be, they are only part of what made this book so fascinating to me. What made it unforgettable was how it made me think about the limits of love and forgiveness and how several families were put to the test in circumstances as horrendous as this. Please be aware that this is NOT your usual true crime book, although it is based on true events and the writer does try to make sense of a crime most of us would consider senseless- the murder of 4 members of a family, the Rowes, by the husband/father of that family, a man considered by friends and neighbors to be a loving and attentive parent and spouse. But it goes beyond the murder to give a riveting, detailed portrait of several families and how they lived both before and after this crime tore apart their community. These families had one thing in common - all of them had children with physical or emotional disabilities and the mothers in those families belonged to a support group. The author of this book, Julie Salamon, shows how each person was affected by the challenge of having a handicapped child and how they turned to the Rowes for guidance and inspiration. While some readers might find this part of the book irrelevant and even tedious, I did not. It not only made me think about the unusual stresses faced by families who have children with special needs but it revealed the Rowe family through the eyes of those closest to them. The Rowes were seen as role models and ideals, a family that was dealing with their disabled son as best they could, even better than many others would. The supposed stability of this family is what makes the murders so much more shocking and the author of this book doesn't hesitate to reveal the events leading up to the murder and the spiraling depression that overwhelms Bob Rowe. But she doesn't stop there. She goes on to show his life after institutionalization, his remarriage and eventual death - and then the meeting of his 2nd wife and the women who'd been close to his first wife. Many of them are still angry, baffled and judgmental. I won't reveal the ending of this book to you but will say if you have the willingness to stick with this one, I think you'll find it will force you to think about grace and forgiveness in even the worst circumstances. I admit I'm not sure I don't understand a man like Bob Rowe but I'll never forget him or his family and I'll be thinking about this book and the issue it raised for a long time.

There is no suspense about the facts of the story that forms the basis of this book. Bob Rowe, a loving husband and father, beat his wife and three children to death with a baseball bat in 1978. He was found not guilty by reason of insanity and served approximately three years in a criminal psychiatric ward. Upon his release he remarried and had another child. This book isn't your typical true crime book. Julie Salamon isn't interested in finding out the truth about what happened - that's already widely known. Instead, the book is an invitation to consider some of the most difficult moral issues in our society: when does insanity excuse a crime?, should mentally ill patients be punished as well as treated?, is it possible to forgive the most horrendous crimes? Frustratingly, there are no definite answers and this case doesn't make the debate any clearer.

Salomon clearly did an excellent job of interviewing a wide variety of people who knew Bob Rowe before and after his crime. All points of view are represented, including unforgiving friends and colleagues and Rowe's extremely sympathetic second wife. Because the Rowe's second son, Christopher, was born severely disabled, the original Rowe family was intimately involved with a support group for parents facing similar challenges with their children. This group was the genesis of Salomon's book, and there is a lot of focus on these brave women and their relationship with Bob and Mary Rowe. Given her reliance upon the memories of these women, it is not surprising that one of Salomon's underlying assumptions is that the strain of raising Christopher somehow contributed to Bob Rowe's breakdown and subsequent murder of his family. I personally thought this was off base. It seemed clear to me that Bob's breakdown was precipitated by his professional failures which existed quite apart from his home life. The assistant DA had it right - this was an ego crime. Bob Rowe was so self-centered that he killed his family so they wouldn't have to witness HIS disgrace as a failed professional. All in all, I found Rowe to be a not very sympathetic character, and I think he offers a persuasive example of why criminals who are found not guilty by reason of insanity should be required to serve the same number of years in a psychiatric facility as they would have to serve if they had been convicted and sent to prison. A finding of not guilty by reason of insanity shouldn't be a get-out-of-jail-free card.

An interesting read that raises as many questions as it answers.

My biggest problem with this book is that the author tries to make it more socially meaningful than it is by telling it as the story of a man "overwhelmed" by the responsibilities of caring for a severely handicapped child -- hence a person we can all relate to on some level.

But NOBODY in the story actually says that Bob Rowe was overwhelmed! Bob coped quite well for many years until his mother died. Then he began to have hallucinations that his mother was telling him to kill his WIFE (not his handicapped son.) As a result he was hospitalized and medicated. Unsurprisingly, the medication prevented him from functioning as a cracker-jack lawyer, as he had previously, and he began to lose jobs. He developed an obsession with his dwindling finances. Eventually he decided to stop taking his medicine. At that point, he was both out of a job and psychotic. BOB says that the precipitating cause of his murdering his family was fear that he could no longer provide for them.

One of the prosecutors interviewed for this book says exactly the same thing. He says it's a "male ego" thing which is not at all uncommon in men (but very rare in women.) The man feels that he is a failure, that he can no longer take care of his family, ergo he has to kill himself, ergo he has to kill all of them too, because how could they survive without him?

In all of the court proceedings NOBODY says that Bob Rowe killed his family because he was overwhelmed by caring for a handicapped child. In fact, it's pointed out that, of his three children, he killed his handicapped son LAST. Also, that he had many many occasions to kill his handicapped son in a way which would have avoid all suspicion. If the handicapped son were the big issue in his life, why kill the whole family? Why not kill the son secretly (he took the kid sailing regularly and could easily have staged a sailing accident)?

I think the author is trying to manipulate the reader into feeling "there but for the Grace of God go I" (i.e., "perhaps I too would crack under similar unbearable strain") but this is just not supported by the facts -- unless the reader is concerned that they might suddenly become psychotic for no discernable reason.

Among many diagnoses given to Bob Rowe was "borderline personality disorder" and this is clearly correct in that he NEVER seems to have grasped the enormity of what he did. After he "recovered" (pretty much immediately in the sense of starting to perk right up and take care of his own interests) his big sorrow was the great injustice done to HIM in that he was unfairly blamed for something he wasn't responsible for. Here's the luckiest murderer in the history of the world -- three years in a mental institution, gets out, gets a new family, is surrounded by love and forgiveness -- and we're told that he's "devastated" that he can't get his law degree back! HE'S the victim!

If any one of us had a seizure disorder and we were supposed to be taking medicine for it, and the medicine was interferring with our ability to work, so we decided to stop taking the medicine, and then, while driving, we had a seizure and killed our whole family -- how would we be affected for the rest of our lives? Overwhelming despair? Guilt? Sorrow? (Or would we dedicate our lives to fighting the injustice of having our driver's license taken away?) But Bob whacks in the heads of four people with a baseball bat (fully aware of what he's doing and why -- only "psychotic" in the sense that he's making such a horrifically bad decision) and spends the rest of his life feeling sorry for himself!

BTW -- unlike others, I found the BEST part of this book to be the stories about the moms with handicapped kids. Frankly, as per above, I thought this really didn't have a whole lot to do with the murders, so actually it was pretty irrelevant to the book. But it was very interersting on its own -- in a way that the story of this murderer was not.

Julie Salamon is a fine journalist. The Devil's Candy is one of the best behind-the-scenes books ever written about Hollywood movie-making. She has the rare ability to observe and narrate the details of what is happening without ever intruding upon the facts by pushing her personal opinions at the reader. That is also true of this highly affecting tale, even though Salamon herself is actually involved in the final portion of the book.

I found Facing The Wind fascinating but heavy-going. I don't think there was any other possible way for the author to get the story told, and to compel us to consider the horror inherent in knowing a man who, in the depths of emotional anguish and extreme mental turmoil, killed his family. In examining this "life after death," Salamon puts a positively biblical dilemma on the table for us to consider: Does a man who takes the lives of his family while mentally ill have the right to a "second" life upon returning to a sane state? Does he have the right to practise law? And how/why does a young woman not only marry this man but live with the truth of what he's done?

The first section, dealing with the parents of blind and/or disabled children is informative, harrowing and inspiring; everyone comes fully to life, which is why the second and third parts of the book work so well: because we've been fully introduced to all the people and their children. We've also had a crash course in the monstrous difficulties encountered as the parent(s) of disabled children.

This is a book that will have you debating with yourself for hours, even days after you've finished. It is a very important book, not only because it offers in-depth insight into just how hard it is to be one of those parents, but also because it helps put "normal" parenting into a different perspective--just possibly making us feel that much luckier at having "whole" children.

Most highly recommended.

This is another mesmerizing study of the psychology of human beings and the strange, confounded, surprising things they sometimes do. It is similar to The Adversary in that both men killed their families "out of the blue", but this book is much more of a journalistic study and asks real questions, all revolving around the single word "Why?"

The author Julie Salamon is a journalist of the highest order. She tells a shocking story in a straight-forward manner which makes it seem even more shocking. This is about a lawyer, a family man who was loved and respected, raising three young children, one of them severely handicapped. He came unstrung one day and killed all the kids and his wife. He served 2 years, then was released and tried to get his law license back, married and had another child. It is chilling. There are many people involved in this story, not the least of which are a group of mothers brought together by their children's handicaps.

The book reads like the best of mysteries, the best of medical/psychological journals, the best of true crime, the best of those shocking articles we read in our newspapers about "ordinary" people . . . I wish there were photos in the book. I am sure all involved looked like "regular people".

This story is presented in so many layers, that when I finished the book I felt like plunging ahead in research, hoping against reason to find some answers. The book is a page-turner to say the least! It is a great book. It deserves a larger audience. I read it in two nights because I couldn't put it down. Now, I feel I have nothing to do, nothing to read that will compare with the emotions I felt while reading this book.

Not many stories, real or imagined, grip a reader like Julie Salamon's "Facing The Wind." I knew where the story would end - or so I thought. The murder is revealed on the book jacket, but the tale really lies in whether or not Bob achieves forgiveness and repentance. Does he deserve the second life he finds with his wife, clearly a damaged soul herself? What responsibility is shared by the doctors who released Bob and failed to monitor his intake of psychotropic drugs? How can we, The Moral Reader, react when a man who murders his family, including a helpless, disabled boy, declares he cannot feel remorse since he was mentally disturbed when the act was committed but at the same time declare his love for the dead?

This is a difficult story to read, and it is equally difficult to let it go. Salamon paints a portrait of a family that showed one face to the world, and another to itself. How many of us do the same? The sad details of Mary's clothing when she died and the aiming of the blows to prevent pain linger as the reader struggles to decide what kind of man Bob really is.

There are questions left unanswered in this telling, but the final image of a young girl who adores her daddy reveals the complex nature of the emotion humans call love. Just how much of love is forgiveness?

I disagree with the readers who state that interviews with Bob were required. Salamon gathers her facts via those who knew Bob best. The story is not really about Bob, but about those around him. Their perception, as the saying goes, is the reality.

Salamon captured my attention with "The Devil's Candy," and I look forward to more of her literary non-fiction.

Julie Salamon's Facing the Wind is a gripping true crime work that tells the heartbreaking story of a man who murders his wife and three children (one of them being severely disabled) and is subsequently found not guilty by reason of insanity. Bob and Mary Rove were the perfect couple, everyone loved them. Even when their second son Christopher is born with serious disabilities, Bob and Mary were a terrific couple. Bob was incredibly supportive of Christopher and worked hard to help him develop. Somewhere along the way, though, something in Bob snapped. He sought help, but found none and wound up murdering his family with a baseball bat. He was found not guilty by reason of insanity and ultimately was given another chance to find happiness. Did he deserve it? Was the insanity defense proper in his case? Should someone else have seen this coming? Should he had been able to continue to practice law? Those and other moral questions will certainly run through your mind as you read this work. For the most part, Facing the Wind is a gripping and engaging work. My only complaint is that Salamon spends much more time than necessary focussing on a support group that Bob and Mary belonged to. She details the lives of the members of the group and the problems they encountered with their children. I realize that the group was the way Salamon connected with the story in the first place, but the sections concerning the support group could have used a little editing. Despite that one drawback, this is an interesting and thought-provoking work.

This book is very haunting in its so detailed description of mental illness at its very core. There is no morality question to be answered here. I feel had he lived, Robert Rowe would have gone on & found a reason to kill his second wife & child. When you look at the horrific crime he committed, you are looking at what he did from a 'logical mind', with mental illness there is never logic. Go read case files & histories on mental patients who are in Forensic Centers for committing the same or similar horrific crimes & you will begin to understand Robert Rowe much better. The tragedy here is the state of New York & how he was able to leave that Forensic Center. He should have been there for life as are others who have committed such horrific crimes. Julie Salamon did an excellent job in her information gathering for her book. I am still haunted by this tragic story after having read the book. Hopefully the right state officials in New York read this book.

This is an unusual book, similar to The Adversary, also an account of a man murdering his family in France. In this book, the group of women bonded by their handicapped chldren are heroines to be sure; they should be the primary subject. My problem is with the moral ambivalence of so many people, nearly all we meet but the women's group and one young lawyer who eventually got Bob Rowe disbarred. Rowe murdered his family, was aquitted by reason of insanity, but went on to live a full if troubled life. He himself saw no reason why he should not be allowed to again practice law and many friends, old and new, spoke out in his behalf. The man was a cold-blooded murderer, no matter how depressed and stressed he was. That there are people who can forgive this heinous a crime is a mystery to me and is a dismal reminder of the moral relativism our society has come to embrace.

I read this book because I have two disabled children, along with three other children. I had read in a review that "parents of disabled children" might just have a different reaction to the book than, say, a "regular" reader might.

But none of us are let off the hook that easily. Not me and not you.

The author, Julie Salomon, has constructed a book so complex in its levels, so nonjudgemental in its reporting, and so well crafted in its writing, I was just...stunned, at the end. I was stunned to have finished a book that I couldn't just toss into the category of: "Oh, she'll never understand what a monster that man was", or "Oh! mental illness is the explanation...let us have compassion" or " Oh! She wants me to think THIS way, or THAT way..."

There is no pat answer provided by this book to this awful set of murders committed by this human being who destroyed his family and his own life, by so doing. It doesn't matter that he is "redeemed" by his devoted second wife, and their child. For it is not, in fact redemption. It is merely existence until his own death that we see unfold before us. This is a very sad book, written very well, absolutely NOT a true crime story, but rather a story of human frailty and the manner in which we deal with it.

You want to hate this man for killing his family, but in the end...if you do...you lose a piece of you own soul, in the sense that you have passed judgement where there is no judgement required to be passed. It has been meted out already, his suffering quite clear.