I don’t really know how I found this book. I read it a couple months ago, and there have been so many books since then that I just can’t remember! Anyway, this book is a true story, and at times it was hard to read. Here’s a quick synopsis of what happened:
In Oregon in May 2009, Amanda Stott-Smith dropped her two kids off a bridge into the river. Her four year old son died, but her seven year old daughter lived. Amanda was almost immediately caught and arrested, and she was sentenced to thirty-five years in prison.
The book dives deep into Amanda’s life, from the early days of her troubled marriage, through the present, where she’s in jail. The author doesn’t try to rationalize what Amanda did, but she does try to make sense of it. It seemed like the marriage was doomed from the beginning, but Amanda and Jason (he bothered me so much in this book that I remember his name) felt it’d be a great idea to have kids. They had lots of money troubles along the way, job troubles, cheating, and almost anything else you could imagine. I found myself occasionally feeling badly for Amanda, and then remembering what she did and feeling bad that I felt bad for her. I just can’t imagine getting to the point where you think that dropping your kids off a bridge is a good choice for anyone. People speculated that she was trying to punish her husband, but I think it’s possible that she was just so far gone in her troubles that she legitimately thought she was doing the right thing. It’s sometimes a hard book to read, but I appreciated what the author did in trying to figure out what happened.
CBR11Bingo True Story
