Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #2404317 in Books
• Published on: 1999-05
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Hardcover
• 642 pages

Customer Reviews

If you only buy one Lizzie Borden book, make it this one
"Lizzie Borden took an axe / Gave her mother forty whacks..." According to popular belief Lizzie was responsible for the double murder in Fall River, Massachussetts on 4th August, 1892. A year later, however, a jury found her 'Not Guilty' and officially the case remains unsolved. This has led to a number of theories as to who 'really' did the deed (the maid, the sister who was supposedly in another town, a previously unknown illegitimate half-brother).

With this book you get a plain chronologue of facts and sources - fully referenced - which are left to speak for themselves. From the ancestry of the Bordens of Fall River to the grave of Lizzie's pets you get the full story of the case from beginning to end.

This book is a tremendous work of scholarship. You finally feel you do know Lizzie and her family and understand the world in which they lived. More importantly, the book doesn't attempt to answer questions which will always remain unanswered (why did Lizzie feel driven to kill her father and stepmother at that particular time and in that way?).

The final impression is one of great sadness. Lizzie was acquitted by a jury but condemned in public opinion, living an increasingly lonely life snubbed by her former friends. Even her sister left her in 1905 and they didn't meet or communicate for the rest of their lives - 22 years. And yet this isolated, eccentric old lady treated her newspaper delivery boy to "the best muffins" (baked by Lizzie herself) in town. You could say Lizzie served a 35 year sentence in a prison without bars.

This book lays to rest many of the myths that have grown up about the case (it seems even the weather on that day has been misreported) and should be studied by anyone with a genuine interest in the 'Fall River tragedy'.

a real tome if there ever was one!
Presented in bibliographical style, this is the longest and arguably the most complete and comprehensive Lizzie book written to date. The amount of time and research and writing it must have taken is hard to fathom. This mammoth of a book is an incredible work.

David Rehak
author of "Did Lizzie Borden Axe For It?"