How long does it take to read Bitter Harvest?
a woman's fury, a mother's sacrifice
Bitter Harvest by Ann Rule takes about 9 hours 6 minutes to read at 250 words a minute.
About 9 hours 6 minutes
A week or two of reading
First published 1997. 496 pages, about 136,400 words.
19 days at 30 minutes a day
Estimate based on 275 words per page.
At other speeds
| Slow, 150 words a minute | 15 hours 9 minutes |
| Average, 250 words a minute | 9 hours 6 minutes |
| Fast, 400 words a minute | 5 hours 41 minutes |
The page count is the median across 5 editions, so your copy may differ. How we calculate.
About the book
On the night of October 23/24, 1995 in Prairie Village, Kansas, a fierce, wind-driven fire devastated the luxurious mansion of Dr. Debora Green and her husband, Dr. Michael Farrar. Trapped and burned to death in the flames were twelve-year-old Tim and his six-year-old sister Kelly. Lissa, ten, was barely able to leap to safety from the garage roof into the arms of her mother, who was standing outside the house. When Michael Farrar returned to the scene, he had lost more than his children and his home. His entire life was in ruins. The fire was the climactic event of Michael and Debora's lives. Until that summer, they seemed to have it all -- a happy marriage, successful medical practices, three bright and beautiful children. Then they went on a trip to Peru with their son. There, they met attractive, blonde Celeste Walker, whose husband, John was also a successful doctor. But after that trip, nothing was the same again for either couple, and all the dark hidden places in Debora and Michael's marriage bubbled to the surface in a series of almost unbelievable horrors. Bitter Harvest is the chronicle of this tragedy in the heartland of America, the true story of the disintegration of a marriage and its horrifying consequences. Rule takes us deep in the psyche of a killer whose behavior was so twisted and so evil that it defies belief. Gripping, powerful, and ultimately terrifying, Bitter Harvest is a vivid recreation of an unthinkable crime -- and a depiction of the unimagined depths of a darkness within the human spirit.
Subjects: Arson, Filicide, Case studies, Attempted murder
