Forever and Five Days: An Account of Obsessive Love and Murder That Rocked Grand Rapids, Michiga

The author has done a brilliant job of creating for us a nightmarish true-life series of murders in a nursing home. We've all read occasional news stories of some nursing home employee or hospital worker being imprisoned for serially killing off patients. In this book, though, we're led to the evolution of two mentally unstable women who became lovers and then killers. We're led through the months of lover's fighting and quarrels and the games they played both in the nursing home and outside of it. What disturbed me most, though, was how devoted the lovers of one of the killers, Cathy, remained even after she was proven to be a killer. Her long-suffering husband continued loving her and taking her back even after she tried to murder him with a baseball bat. Even after he heard her confession of serial murders, he told no one until more than a year later. The lover of the second killer, Gwen, are equally hard to forgive. Her girlfriend, Robin, continued to ignore Gwen's repeated confession of mass murder and Robin destroyed valuable evidence that police needed in their case against Gwen. The author does an outstanding job of bringing this cast of killers and enablers to life. His other book, by the way, MASQUERADE, is a classic and I've read it several times. I like his style much better than Ann Rule, who spends pages and pages describing the weather and the geographical background of her murders which become highly boring. Bravo to Lowell Cauffiel for doing such a superb job once again!

This book was wonderful! To the reviewer from Australia that was turned off by the book's (grammer) that would be grammar!

I have been a fan of Mr. Cauffiel's books for several years now.His books are NOT tedious or difficult to read--they are meticulously researched and the subject matter revealed layer by layer to the interested reader. Infused in the narrative of his books is a deep respect for the parties involved and dare I say, some subtle humor as well. For me, this makes for wonderful reading. Fans of superficial, rush-to-market, cheap accounts of lurid crimes and criminals should look elsewhere, not criticize one of the finest true crime writers out there.

This book grabs your attention from beginning to end. It also is very haunting in the lifestyle of these two people and their psyche. It is unreal all the things that apparently happened at this nursing home and all the individuals that became involved in each others lives. An interesting book and very hard to put down. Leaves you wondering long after the end.

I just finished this book yesterday and it is set in my old hometown of Grand Rapids. It is interesting to read of places I know of and it is truly a interesting book that leaves you to come to some of your own conclusions as there are two sides to the story