Caroline Fraser On Serial Killers, Lead Poisoning, and Other Midcentury Disasters

Caroline Fraser On Serial Killers, Lead Poisoning, and Other Midcentury Disasters

Caroline Fraser won the Pulitzer Prize for the biography Prairie Fires: The American Dreams of Laura Ingalls Wilder, then turned her creative and capable hand towards an altogether different subject matter: the proliferation of serial killers at a time of ubiquitous lead poisoning, and the rapid decline of both environmental lead pollution and extreme violence against strangers. In particular, Frasier zooms in on the Pacific Northwest as her hor…

Toxic Waste in the Time of Serial Killers in "Murderland" - Chicago Review of Books

Raised on Mercer Island outside of Seattle, Pulitzer Prize-winning writer Caroline Fraser reveals in Murderland: Crime and Bloodlust in the Time of Serial Killers that, as a child, she fantasized about murdering her father, a sailing enthusiast and follower of Christian Science. What kid hasn’t daydreamed about killing off one or both of their parents? Yet Fraser casts a sinister pall over missed opportunities to make dad’s death look like a boa…