The Women Are Not Fine: The Dark History of a Poisonous Sisterhood by Hope Reese

Description The women of Nagyrv are desperate. They’re abused by their husbands. They are feeding their newborns to livestock. At the turn of the 20th century, in the village of Nagyrv, Hungary, midwife Zsuzsanna Fazekas was more than a caretaker – she was a confidante. She helped poor women give birth; she assisted them with abortions; and she listened. Their stories were the same: husbands who drank, who beat them, who made their lives unbearable. In response, Auntie Zsuzsi asked one question: “Why bother with them?”Her solution was arsenic. Soon, women began slipping this concoction, made by dissolving flypaper in water, into their husbands’ porridge, stews, and brandy. And over the next twenty years, the quiet village became the epicenter of one of the deadliest poisoning epidemics of the 20th century – according to some estimates, up to 300 people in the region were murdered. Why did they do it? How did these murders spin out of control? How did these women get away with their crimes for two decades?In The Women Are Not Fine, journalist Hope Reese pieces together archival newspapers, court documents, police records, and the vital work of historians, sociologists, and psychologists, diving deep into the truth behind this extraordinary event. Her findings serve as a stark warning: when women in a community are pushed to the brink, the consequences reverberate through history. The Women Are Not Fine is more than a true crime story. It’s a timely, haunting exploration of what happens when women’s suffering goes unanswered. Customers Also Liked Related products The Spectacular Sisterhood of Superwomen : Awesome Female Characters from Comic Book History: 3 by Hope Nicholson Humankind: A Hopeful History by Rutger Bregman A History of Women in 101 Objects : A walk through female history by Annabelle Hirsch Reviews