In the Garden of Spite

Starred review from November 2, 2020
Bruce (You Let Me In) takes a mesmerizing look at the murderous career of the real-life 19th-century serial killer Belle Gunness. In 1877, the 17-year-old Gunness is impregnated by a neighbor, Anders, in Selbu, Norway. After she demands marriage, Anders attacks her, causing a miscarriage. Months later, Gunness gets her revenge, fatally poisoning him. She continues to indulge her violent streak after she moves to Chicago in 1881. Her unhappy marriage to Mads Sorensen ends when she poisons him with a cyanide-laced slice of cake. The widow uses the insurance money she collects to buy a farm in Indiana’s LaPorte County, where she adds to her body count, including her second spouse, Peter Gunness. Bruce plausibly reconstructs Gunness’s mental state, including her chilling assessment: “There is nothing unnatural about me.... I am as natural as they come. There are just not many of my kind.” Fans of fictionalized treatments of notorious murderers will be fascinated. Agent: Brianne Johnson, Writers House.

January 1, 2021
Following her stunning debut, You Let Me In (2020), Bruce uses a framework of fact to create fiction that horrifies. Here her subject is serial killer Belle Gunness, n�e Brynhild Strseth, who grew up in the same part of Norway as the author and in 1881 immigrated to the U.S., where she embarked on a killing spree, continuing a string of earlier murders in her native land. Bruce explores Belle's motivation to murder, focusing on an incident in which a teenage girl, pregnant by the heir to the farm at which she was in service, is badly beaten by him and miscarries. Belle's anger spurs her to revenge, producing feelings of joy that she later tries to re-create. The story jumps from 1877 to 1908, alternately narrated by Belle and her older sister, Nellie, who becomes increasingly concerned at the "accidents" that widow her sister twice and by the disappearance of men who visit Belle's Indiana farm. Despite her prowess with a meat cleaver, Belle has a soft spot for children, and this complexity in her character adds to the interest of this grisly historical thriller.

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