Rating: 
Summary: Truly Amazing
Review: The sheer amount of detailed material Ms. O'Malley amassed is staggering enough. Add in her correlations, cross references, interlaced quotes and internal dialogs melded with incisive personality sketches and tied together with interviews and correspondence from scores of the large and small actors involved in this tragedy and the result is truly amazing.She quotes chapter and verse, but never preaches. She examines questions of integrity, conscience and ethics, but never moralizes. She gives us the material to come to the same logical conclusions she has drawn - but never makes them for us. Ms. O'Malley has painted horrific detail with humanity and compassion and managed to make us think deeply about such lightweight topics as mental health, the legal system, health care, mental medication, childcare, religion, family relationships and societal responsibilities while staying off the soapbox, eschewing histrionics and maintaining our interest - quite a feat.
Rating:
Summary: Mental Illness is Real
Review: This book will clear up a lot of things for people wo were/are interested in the Yates case. Much blame has been put on Rusty, her doctors, and her family. O'Malley has personally interviewed most parties involved and the picture that she paints is crystal clear: our mental health system is sorely lacking. I believe that for those in the camp that think she should have gotten the death penalty, this book will change their minds. It is clear that Andrea Yates should be under psychiatric supervision for the rest of her life, not in jail. Aside from a little skipping around that was confusing, O'Malley covers things chronologically, beginning with the drownings and ending with the uncertainty of the future for the Yateses. I was a bit taken aback when the author claimed that she "saved Andrea's life" herself, but apart from that, this book is excellent.
Rating:
Summary: A Compelling Story
Review: When I first heard about Andrea Yates horrible crime I was living in Houston, and like most of my friends thought she was a cold blooded killer. I mean, it takes a while to drown five kids - how could she have done that? I figured at some point after the first or second you would have to comprehend what you were doing and STOP - how could she do all five? I am a mother (of only one, however) and I have been hospitalized for depression and bipolar and I know I couldn't do that to my child. But my illness was not nearly as severe as Mrs. Yates disease. This book dispels some of the rumors and puts Mrs. Yates into a more sympathetic light. Under Texas law, she knew that her acts were wrong, but, in her psychotic frame of mind, she beleived she was taking the best course of action available to her. This book makes a compelling argument for mental health care reform - if Mrs. Yates had received anything close to the kind of help she needed, her children would almost cetainly be alive today. If her problem had been physical rather than mental, her children would be alive and she would be a well woman. If anything, this book showed me that there are two sides to every coin, and that even though I myself have been the recipient of poor mental health care, it is still easy to blame the patient. This story has no clear cut right or wrong, but does show that health care in this country should be governed by the patients illness, not the amount of care their insurance will cover.
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