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    To the Bridge: A True Story of Motherhood and Murder
    To the Bridge: A True Story of Motherhood and Murder
    To the Bridge: A True Story of Motherhood and Murder
    Audiobook8 hours

    To the Bridge: A True Story of Motherhood and Murder

    Written by Nancy Rommelmann

    Narrated by Nancy Rommelmann

    4/5

    ()

    About this audiobook

    The case was closed, but for journalist Nancy Rommelmann, the mystery remained: What made a mother want to murder her own children?

    On May 23, 2009, Amanda Stott-Smith drove to the middle of the Sellwood Bridge in Portland, Oregon, and dropped her two children into the Willamette River. Forty minutes later, rescuers found the body of four-year-old Eldon. Miraculously, his seven-year-old sister, Trinity, was saved. As the public cried out for blood, Amanda was arrested, convicted, and sentenced to thirty-five years in prison.

    Embarking on a seven-year quest for the truth, Rommelmann traced the roots of Amanda’s fury and desperation through thousands of pages of records, withheld documents, meetings with lawyers and convicts, and interviews with friends and family who felt shocked, confused, and emotionally swindled by a woman whose entire life was now defined by an unspeakable crime. At the heart of that crime: a tempestuous marriage, a family on the fast track to self-destruction, and a myriad of secrets and lies as dark and turbulent as the Willamette River.

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherBrilliance Audio
    Release dateJul 1, 2018
    ISBN9781543643206
    To the Bridge: A True Story of Motherhood and Murder
    Author

    Nancy Rommelmann

    Nancy Rommelmann has written for the LA Weekly, the Wall Street Journal, and the New York Times, among other publications. She is the author of several previous works of nonfiction and fiction. She grew up in Brooklyn, New York, and currently lives in Portland, Oregon. Find out more at nancyromm.com.

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    Reviews for To the Bridge

    4/5

    73 ratings7 reviews

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    • 4/5
      I liked it and thought it was well written. I thought the writer was persistent with her questions to all invoked in order to get the emotional answers, which made the book better than most.
    • 4/5
      This is the true story of Amanda Stott-Smith who threw her 2 young children off a bridge. Very well written and also read by the author. The only complaint I have is that just a couple of times the story was disjointed..she interviewed somebody 10 years after the crime just relating Amanda's behavior as she was imprisoned. Perhaps I wasn't listening close enough? 292 pages
    • 5/5
      Excellent. Thoughtful. Much more philosophical and well written than so many books in this genre. I appreciated the intelligence and sensitivity of the author..
    • 3/5
      Well written but I couldn’t finish it. The repeated pressure that the reporter placed on people to talk to her felt predatory.
    • 4/5
      This is the true story of Amanda Stott-Smith who threw her 2 young children off a bridge. Very well written and also read by the author. The only complaint I have is that just a couple of times the story was disjointed..she interviewed somebody 10 years after the crime just relating Amanda's behavior as she was imprisoned. Perhaps I wasn't listening close enough? 292 pages
    • 4/5
      It is easy to say a mother killing her children is a monstrous and heinous act, but what leads up to that point? Was it preventable, is it 100% her fault, what was life like for the children and the mother who commits this crime? To The Bridge examines Amanda's life, her children's, Trinity, Eldon, and Gavin, and her husband's, Jason, lives before she threw 2 of her kids off of a bridge causing one to die. This book doesn't lessen Amanda's crimes, but you end up understanding her reasoning somewhat. You actually end up feeling some compassion for Amanda through Nancy's blunt, but thoughtful writing, because Nancy is also trying to understand her mixed emotions.

      1 person found this helpful

    • 3/5
      I feel so sorry for the kids, and there are many of them, who have come up losers in the big parent lottery, but most kids don't have to pay with their lives even though they are affected all their lives. But there are those especially heinous situations where a child is murdered. And that's what happened here.The mother in this story threw 2 or her 3 children off a bridge in the middle of the night. The author tries to find out why, tries to discover details beyond the headlines. And she does so, to some extent. There are no clear answer. Yes, she had a horrible husband whose behavior ultimately contributed to the tragedy. He sounds like a horrible human being who should never have had children. And the mother should never had children. She was a selfish person who spiraled in a downward abyss of her own making.There is quite a bit of information about possible motives, but there is no real answer. I wanted to understand this woman better, and I do to an extent, but this book did not cause me to forgive her for what she did.The book, while interesting, did seem to me to have too much padding, with repetition of information. It also jumped around quite a bit, and some of the sentence structures were a bit unclear. It was still worth reading although it leaves me sad for the children and angry with the adults whose most important job was to protect them.