Special thanks to NetGalley and Berkley Publishing Group for sharing this outstanding ARC with me in exchange my honest opinions.

I enjoyed this one from the very beginning. I love books based on true events and people. Belle is an interesting character. AS the story progresses, we see her interact with others and commit her crimes, all without remorse and all with survival in mind. My reservations lie in the length of the book as you become numbed by her actions and at times the pace is a bit slow. Perhaps less about the food would help! Immediately, neighbors began mourning the tragedy: Belle Gunness, a lonely widow who had spent years fruitlessly looking for love, had died surrounded by her children in a horrendous fire. For all her life, it seemed that tragedy had followed Mrs. Gunness—she had lost two husbands and multiple children to terrible accidents—and now it looked as though fate had come for her, too. Within days, a disgruntled former farmhand named Ray Lamphere was arrested for setting fire to the building.Nellie agrees to fund Brynhild's voyage to America and takes her under her wing in a Norwegian-American apartment community in Chicago. Brynhild becomes Bella. Bella's pride, greed, and need for control over the men in her life lead to some dark decisions... and her sister Nellie begins to suspect that something is not all right with her sister. But for whatever reason, the jury still believed there was convincing evidence that Lamphere had started the fire. Lamphere’s only saving grace came when a chemist found traces of strychnine in the bodies of the burnt children, evidence that Gunness’s kids had not died from arson, but from the same poison preferred by their mother (though the testifying doctor refused to declare strychnine the cause of death). That evidence helped acquit Lamphere of any charges of murder, but it failed to protect him from the charge of arson—a crime that carried up to a 21-year sentence.

Bella must be one of the most unscrupulous women to have ever lived. A serial killer who lets no one stand in her way. It left me reeling between revulsion, horror and a rather unwilling… admiration! In a third letter, the mysterious woman wrote: “Do not say one word about it to anyone, not even your nearest relative.”

A crowd gathering to watch the exhumations on the Gunness property / LaPorte County Historical Society Museum

With smoke choking his throat, Maxson cried out in a desperate attempt to get the family’s attention. “Fire! Fire!” But nobody stirred. The only thing Maxson heard was the ominous creaking of burning timbers. Like many psychopaths, she was very shrewd in identifying potential victims,” Schechter explained. “These were lonely Norwegian bachelors, many completely cut off from their families. [Gunness] beguiled them with promises of down-home Norwegian cooking and painted a very seductive portrait of the kind of life they’d enjoy.” Come prepared to stay forever." This would turn out to be a cruel joke, as the only suitor known to survive a visit with Belle would discover. Mrs. Gunness received men visitors all the time,” one of her farmhands later told the New York Tribune. “A different man came nearly every week to stay at the house. She introduced them as cousins from Kansas, South Dakota, Wisconsin, and from Chicago… She was always careful to make the children stay away from her ‘cousins.'” Eerily, in 1931, a woman named Esther Carlson was arrested in Los Angeles for poisoning a Norwegian-American man and attempting to steal his money. She died of tuberculosis while awaiting trial. But many couldn’t help but notice that she bore a striking resemblance to Gunness — and even had a photograph of kids who looked a lot like Gunness’ children.

Belle Gunness Lures More Victims To Their Deaths

His mind immediately turned to the other people living in the house. Three children, as well as the home’s owner—a 48-year-old widow named Belle Gunness—were likely sleeping. Maxson was the family’s hired farmhand and had lived on the small La Porte, Indiana, farm for barely three months. It was his job to protect the property and the people in it. He ran across his bedroom and tried to open the door leading to Gunness’s half of the home.