Cara Robertson

Guilty.

Robertson focuses on how the idea of a young gentlewoman committing a violent murder was recieved in 19th-c America, and how that influenced popular opinion and the outcome of the trial. If some of the trial narrative drags, imagine what it must've been like to actually have to sit in that courtroom. Robertson has done us all the favor of sorting through what must've been thousands of pages of trial transcripts and newspaper articles to distill an engaging narrative that contrasts the ideal of genteel womanhood with the reality of a "nice" woman who may well have (and I think did) murder her family.… (lisätietoja)

So maybe finishing up this book on Mother's Day was a little strange, but I'm not going to apologize. This is a fantastic factual look at the Lizzie Borden case. It starts with the crime and then moves step by step through the entire process through to the end of the trial and then a brief wrap up of the aftermath. It is about the trial and I suspect there are many who want more color and outside the courtroom scenes but I found it riveting and I appreciated the clear factual nature of the writing. Ms. Robertson uses the actual words of the participants to tell much of the story and the book gains credibility through that choice. What a truly fascinating case this was and is. It gets at a lot of important American themes about class, sexism, and the nature of our criminal system, and in the end I think that the evidence was not sufficient to merit a guilty verdict, but if you ask me who I think committed the crime then I will end up pointing at Lizzie Borden. As William Blackstone so elegantly and succinctly put it, "It is better that ten guilty persons escape than that one innocent suffer."… (lisätietoja)