Download PDF The Trial of Lizzie Borden Cara Robertson 9781508280538 Books

Product details Audio CD 1 pages Publisher Simon & Schuster Audio and Blackstone Audio; Unabridged edition (March 12, 2019) Language English ISBN-10 1508280533

The Trial of Lizzie Borden Cara Robertson 9781508280538 Books Reviews

• Before you buy this book, ask yourself what you are really interested in. Are you interested in the tale of Lizzie Borden? Are you interested in the legend? Lizzie, herself? Are you interested in the life and theories of inconsequential newsmen and women? Maybe a scholar or two who has something to say about new ways of discovering data...but has nothing really to do with Lizzie Borden. So many of us see "Lizzie Borden" in a title and immediately click on it, wrongfully assuming that it will be another excellent read. And that's where you will be woefully disappointed. I'm not blaming anyone for me buying this kindle read. But it was not what I thought it would be. I'm not interested in far fetched ideas that are thrown in for no other reason than to throw them in. What does it have to do with the case of Lizzie Borden. Nothing. I don't need to know about the lawyers and their upbringing and law school. These are people who would be nothing in history, if not for Lizzie Borden. I want to hear about HER. Just a really awful book.
• I was so looking forward to this book. But at 12% on the where Mr. Knowlton “mansplained” some information to Lizzie, I’m done. This pejorative word really caught in my chest and tells me this book probably isn’t for me (male). I am so disappointed.
• Most people are familiar with the murder that Lizzie Borden was accused of as there have been numerous books and movies based on it. In August of 1892, Lizzie’s father and stepmother were brutally murdered in their home. Lizzie was accused of the murder and the trial became a sensationalized spectacle. People then and now all have different opinions of what happened that day in Fall River, Massachusetts. Was Lizzie a guilty murderess or was she wrongly accused?
  
  I have read many accounts of this murder and even saw a play based on it. Ms. Robertson’s book is one of the most extensively researched and unbiased accounts I’ve read. This most definitely does not read like a historical novel as well it shouldn’t, though never ceased to hold my interest. This is a fact-based accounting based on Ms. Robertson’s twenty years of research. The book itself ended at 65%, the rest being a list of notes detailing the source of almost every sentence in the book.
  
  What I found the most impressive about the book was that the author includes much information about society at the time of the murder and the way people perceived women. The men on Lizzie’s jury just couldn’t imagine a lady such as Lizzie committing such an atrocious act. For a women to do what was done to these two victims, she would have had to have been a monster and that would have shown in her countenance. The book also touches on what was thought to be the cause of “hysteria” in women.
  The book not only covers the trial in detail but also the discussions that were taking place outside of the courtroom and newspaper accountings, as well as rumors. Another plus is that the book is chock full of photos that help the details to life.
  
  A must read for true life crime readers. Highly recommended.
• Cara Robertson has written a fine book that wonderfully weaves the context of the Trial proceedings into a “you are there” narrative flush with new insights and deft storytelling, exposing the female-suppressed culture of the Gilded Age. Drawing heavily from the Trial transcript and newspapers of the day, she tells this oft-told tale in a new way that forces the reader to reflect on the cultural influences of the era and the why and how of its sensationalism, final outcome, and enduring appeal.
  
  Well read Lizzie Borden scholars will hear in the narrative echos of previously published books on the case which have been “go to” resources for decades, but probably my favorite sentence in the whole book is this “Combining the enduring emotional force of myth and more prosaic intellectual challenge of a detective story, it is a ‘locked door’ mystery written by Sophocles.” (Kudos, Cara)
  
  The book credits almost all the photographs therein to the Fall River Historical Society where, sadly, the wrong image of a purported Uncle John Vinnicum Morse is actually that of his (and sister Sarah’s) brother, William Bradford Morse. I know this to be a fact because William’s photograph is included in one of several family albums to be found at the Swansea Historical Society, housed at the Swansea Public Library – a place where I have visited for research several times. William’s name is handwritten in pencil above his image.
  
  The image on the left is the actual John V. Morse and has appeared in countless books and documentaries. William, who was in Excelsior, Minnesota during the murders (as he had been most of his life) did, however, resemble his brother, John. (It should be noted that when I brought this error to the attention of the FRHS, I was informed they had documentation from a relative of the Morse family asserting the photograph of William was John. This fails to explain the decades of the other photograph being cited as John with credit to the FRHS).
  
  A more blatant error appears on page 278 where the author writes of post Trial notoriety and states “Papers printed improbable reports of engagements, including a betrothal to one of her former jurors.” There is no source citation in the end notes to this statement, however, it has been widely reported of the December 10, 1896 Fall River Herald News report citing a “Swansea school teacher” as the subject of this rumor. That person was, in fact, Orrin Gardner.
  
  Ms. Robertson’s deft handling of Knowlton’s lengthy summation strips his elegant oratory to the persuasive essentials the prosecution’s case was based on Lizzie’s exclusive opportunity and that the victims did not die at the same time -and that these were the controlling facts of the case.
  
  As to why Lizzie remained in Fall River the entire second half of her life, the author speculates with an allegorical reference to Hawthorne’s The Scarlet Letter “It may seem marvelous, that, with the world before her….this woman should still call that place her home, where and where only, she must needs be the type of shame. But there is a fatality, a feeling so irresistible and inevitable that it had the force of doom, which almost invariably compels human beings to linger around and haunt ghost-like, the spot where some great and marked recent event has given color to their lifetime, and still the more irresistibly, the darker the tinge that saddens it.” (And here one can pause to ponder Donald Woods’ appropriate marketing of Maplecroft).
  
  While I was impressed with Cara Robertson’s fresh narrative point of view, my overall expectations of the book fell short considering the author’s background. There were far too many errors. There was no new information, and indeed it seemed peppered with the redundancy of other known works. I had been anticipating more given her years of research on the case and her impeccable credentials. That said, I still highly recommend this book to anyone interested in this case and specifically to those interested in the Gilded Age and its cultural impact on women.
  
  -Faye Musselman
  Cypress, CA