Book News
On Thursday, June 14, 2007 I gave my first reading to a hometown crowd. Maybe half the jurors, most of the gavel groupies, the prosecutor Paul Sequeira, Susan Polk's jury consultant Karen Fleming-Ginn, former Deputy Sheriff Ken Hansen and private eye
Kent Brezee were at Orinda Books as were many old friends. The bookstore hadn't had such a big crowd since Gail Sheehy came to town two years ago.

I read snippets and talked about the book. I admitted that sometimes my thinking about Susan Polk's culpability changes depending on my proximity to her (The greater distance I have from her, the greater my sympathy.) I asked the jurors if they've entertained second thoughts. None of them had.

During the question period someone asked if Susan Polk had been violent before she killed her husband. I explained there had been
one incident in which she had an altercation with a neighborhood woman who was walking her dogs and punched her. A woman in the
back of the store piped up, that she was that woman. I'd interviewed Marilyn Hajjar four years before and no longer recognized her. Another woman spoke up saying she'd been the boys' fourth grade teacher. Today a member of the audience asked if I'd planted them there. I also met the realtor who will be putting the Polk estate on the market. When my talk was over I signed books at a small table while nearby, Paul Sequeira, the DA, was encircled by fans who insisted he sign books as well.

I couldn't have had a better beginning and assumed it would be all downhill after that.

I was wrong.

Saturday night, June 16, I talked about Seduced by Madness at Cody's in Berkeley -- again to standing room only crowd. I failed to notice that as I spoke a tiny, ancient woman in an electric wheelchair, parked herself along the edges of the crowd. When I took questions I could hear her small voice and turned to observe Elizabeth Drozdowska, Susan Polk's old Berkeley neighbor and one of her most effective witnesses. Ms. Drozdowska came to Cody's to tell everyone what a wonderful person Susan Polk was, a devoted wife and mother. I had to repeat everything she said because no one other than those close by could hear her. She would have kept on talking had I not acknowledged another questioner, a woman with curly white hair who said she, too, had known Susan Polk when the Polks lived in Berkeley. The woman described how the Polks had accused a school administrator of molesting their son and had destroyed the man and his family. I told the audience they were witnessing the two sides of Susan Polk. There's always someone such as Ms. Drozdowska who finds Susan Polk kind, warm and loving while others she encounters think she's dangerous.

Therapists also spoke up, one of them reminding the audience that in the seventies, when Dr. Felix Polk had sex with his patient, such behavior was common. The same therapist also reminded older members of the audience that back then most therapists believed in satanic abuse. Her comments upset other therapists in the audience who disagreed but not all of them. As I signed books one therapist approached and whispered, "You know that ritual abuse is real, don't you?"