Bitter Harvest (Mass Market Paperback)

~ (Author) "The wind had blown constantly that fall, but that wasn't unusual for Kansas..." (more)
Key Phrases: ricin antibodies, ricin poisoning, pour patterns, Debora Green, Kansas City, Prairie Village (more...)

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com Review

Fans of Ann Rule will find much to relish in Bitter Harvest, the tale of a brilliant Kansas physician who holds herself together well enough to put on a decent show for the outside world, but in the heart of her horror-struck family is a violent and baffling monster. She drinks, abuses drugs, spews invective, and even lights fires. At one point she learns from an Agatha Christie novel about a potent toxin contained in castor beans, and she starts poisoning her long-suffering husband. Yet until the final fire that consumes two of her children, they continue to love her and defend her to attackers. Rule tells the story with flair, conveying all of the heady feelings involved, but still the book has a flaw: Rule fails to understand the main character. When a psychiatrist testifies that the doctor is at a younger age than a toddler in her ability to process or sustain emotions, Rule writes, "That was a shocker. Could a woman with an IQ of 165 and a biting, facetious wit, a woman who had zipped through college and medical school, be a child emotionally?"Yes, she could. Bitter Harvest would've been a stronger book if Rule had shown us how. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

From Library Journal

Dr. Deborah Green was a brilliant, wealthy, married mother of three who was convicted of repeatedly trying to poison her husband and of killing two of her children in a fire she methodically set in the family home. Rule (A Fever in the Heart, LJ 11/1/96) proves once again that she is a master of the true-crime genre?she builds the narrative from Green's days as a student of superior intelligence through her years in an increasingly unhappy marriage to her physician husband. Rule carefully chronicles Green's bizarre behavior and takes the reader through the arson investigation as well as Green's husband's illnesses, surgeries, and attempt to rebuild his life with his remaining child, who escaped the fire. Peppered throughout the narrative are quotes from Green herself, which expose her twisted thinking and her attempts to rationalize her behavior. An outstanding chronicle of a crime investigation as well as a riveting profile of a brilliant mind and empty soul.
-?Christine A. Moesch, Buffalo & Erie County P.L., N.Y.
Copyright 1998 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

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Product Details

• Mass Market Paperback: 496 pages
• Publisher: Pocket; 1st THUS edition (February 1, 1999)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0671868691
• ISBN-13: 978-0671868697
• Product Dimensions: 6.7 x 4.1 x 1.2 inches
• Shipping Weight: 8 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 3.6 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (176 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #105,945 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

14 of 15 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A modern Medea, October 21, 2005

By	E. A. Lovitt "starmoth" (Gladwin, MI USA) - See all my reviews (TOP 50 REVIEWER)    (REAL NAME)

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.

12 of 13 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars I couldn't put it down!, August 25, 1999

By	[e-mail] (Kamiah, Idaho) - See all my reviews

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.

7 of 7 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars I like the book but...., March 15, 2003

By	Terry M. Callen (Gloucester City, NJ United States) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

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.