Bitter Harvest: A Woman's Fury, a Mother's Sacrifice

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.

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.

I read true crime basically, to try and understand what makes people do what they do. I still don't know if I will ever understand this Mother/Doctor. I suppose what makes this story all the more horrifying is that she had been a practicing physician. Ann Rule is at her best with this shocking, horrifying tale. Each time I remebered that this was fact not fiction, I was filled to revulsion, at times, totally anguished. The book is riveting. My heart bled for those poor, innocent children. All I can say is that their Mother was truly a mad woman. Obviously, Dr. Green should be buried underneath the prison which she sits in--alive! The sad thing about it, is that I don't even know if this woman was actually "sick." I don't think she deserves that much benefit of a doubt. Anne does a great job depicting this nightmare.

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.

Both doctors were an interesting study.. Debra was an amazingly intellegent woman who never developed into a productive person.. Mike was a man who had problems with divorce even tho he was desperately unhappy.. I think my question is the same as many who have written.. being a doctor.. it was hard to understand why he didn't insist on getting help for her.. the poisoning aspect was interesting.. who ever heard of castor bean seeds.. I marveled at how he suspected she was poisoning him and continued to stay with her so long.. of course the real tragedy was the death of the children.. Im convinced she loved them but killed them purely for revenge.. Ann is a wonderful writer.. I read everything she writes, tho her attept at fiction was awful.. she really invests a lot in her projects.. I think Ann has the need to understand the criminal mind..