Rating: 
Summary: Too discursive
Review: "Facing the Wind" by Julie Salamon is a well intentioned and well written account of a father's brutal and deliberate killing of his wife and three children--one of whom was born with multiple handicaps and was severely impaired--his subsequent incarceration in a mental hospital--and eventual release back into society after two and a half years and attempts to be reinstated as an attorney. It is also the story of a group of women who formed a "support group" because THEIR children were similarly handicapped, and how they came to admire the Rowe family because of the loving sacrifices both Rob Rowe and his wife,Mary, made to care for their multiply handicapped son,Christopher, as well as other children. Quite frankly, I found the book disappointing. Instead of focusing primarily on Rob Rowe and the legal and moral issues involved in mounting an "Insanity Defense"--Julie Salamon spends an endless amount of time delving into the lives and personalities of the women in the "Support Group" which the Rowe's joined. Who really CARES about THEM? The story of the Rowes is what's really important. I know most of the reviewers who have already reviewed her book will probably disagree with me, but except for the parts dealing specifically with the Rowe's and the woman whom he eventually married after he was released from the mental institution, I found all the details about the Support Group to be largely UNNECESSARY AND IRRELEVANT to the main story, namely the killing of the Rowe children, the issues involved in his determing his innocence or guilt, and the aftermath of the tragedy. This is not a very satisfying book because Julie Salamon simply SPREADS HERSELF TOO THIN!
Rating: 
Summary: The ultimate moral dilemma.
Review: There is no suspense about the facts of the story that forms the basis of this book. Bob Rowe, a loving husband and father, beat his wife and three children to death with a baseball bat in 1978. He was found not guilty by reason of insanity and served approximately three years in a criminal psychiatric ward. Upon his release he remarried and had another child. This book isn't your typical true crime book. Julie Salamon isn't interested in finding out the truth about what happened - that's already widely known. Instead, the book is an invitation to consider some of the most difficult moral issues in our society: when does insanity excuse a crime?, should mentally ill patients be punished as well as treated?, is it possible to forgive the most horrendous crimes? Frustratingly, there are no definite answers and this case doesn't make the debate any clearer. Salomon clearly did an excellent job of interviewing a wide variety of people who knew Bob Rowe before and after his crime. All points of view are represented, including unforgiving friends and colleagues and Rowe's extremely sympathetic second wife. Because the Rowe's second son, Christopher, was born severely disabled, the original Rowe family was intimately involved with a support group for parents facing similar challenges with their children. This group was the genesis of Salomon's book, and there is a lot of focus on these brave women and their relationship with Bob and Mary Rowe. Given her reliance upon the memories of these women, it is not surprising that one of Salomon's underlying assumptions is that the strain of raising Christopher somehow contributed to Bob Rowe's breakdown and subsequent murder of his family. I personally thought this was off base. It seemed clear to me that Bob's breakdown was precipitated by his professional failures which existed quite apart from his home life. The assistant DA had it right - this was an ego crime. Bob Rowe was so self-centered that he killed his family so they wouldn't have to witness HIS disgrace as a failed professional. All in all, I found Rowe to be a not very sympathetic character, and I think he offers a persuasive example of why criminals who are found not guilty by reason of insanity should be required to serve the same number of years in a psychiatric facility as they would have to serve if they had been convicted and sent to prison. A finding of not guilty by reason of insanity shouldn't be a get-out-of-jail-free card. An interesting read that raises as many questions as it answers.
Rating: 
Summary: A Book That Stays With You
Review: Not many stories, real or imagined, grip a reader like Julie Salamon's "Facing The Wind." I knew where the story would end - or so I thought. The murder is revealed on the book jacket, but the tale really lies in whether or not Bob achieves forgiveness and repentance. Does he deserve the second life he finds with his wife, clearly a damaged soul herself? What responsibility is shared by the doctors who released Bob and failed to monitor his intake of psychotropic drugs? How can we, The Moral Reader, react when a man who murders his family, including a helpless, disabled boy, declares he cannot feel remorse since he was mentally disturbed when the act was committed but at the same time declare his love for the dead? This is a difficult story to read, and it is equally difficult to let it go. Salamon paints a portrait of a family that showed one face to the world, and another to itself. How many of us do the same? The sad details of Mary's clothing when she died and the aiming of the blows to prevent pain linger as the reader struggles to decide what kind of man Bob really is. There are questions left unanswered in this telling, but the final image of a young girl who adores her daddy reveals the complex nature of the emotion humans call love. Just how much of love is forgiveness? I disagree with the readers who state that interviews with Bob were required. Salamon gathers her facts via those who knew Bob best. The story is not really about Bob, but about those around him. Their perception, as the saying goes, is the reality. Salamon captured my attention with "The Devil's Candy," and I look forward to more of her literary non-fiction.
Rating: 
Summary: Blurred Vision
Review: In the writing of this book, the author failed to gain the cooperation of the person who knew Bob Rowe best - his brother, nor does she delve into the relationships Mr. Rowe formed while employed at Allstate, the company where he spent the majority of his professional career. The author skimmed over Mr. Rowe's childhood and the complex relationship he shared with his mother. The reader is left with out a clear understanding of Mr. Rowe's psychiatric diagnosis...Was he Bi-Polar? Was he Schizophrenic? Paranoid? Psychotic? Did he continue to take medications for the psychiatric disorders which allowed him another chance at bat? After all, the above medical conditions do not just go away when the time is right. Mental illness is not that convenient or accommodating. Was Colleen his first romantic relationship after his discharge? The author fills the void of forensic expert opinions with the emotions of the second Mrs. Rowe and the women who loved the very special woman who was Mary Rowe. Ms. Salamon failed in her attempt to tell a tale of redemption. Ultimately Bob Rowe's story is a tale of shame - shame on those people whom he clearly manipulated and the system that allowed him to move on to his better life after depriving the four people he deliberately blugeoned to death to do the same. It is equally a shame that Dominick Dunne did not tell the story of the Rowe family - he might have titled the book, Cheating the Wind.
Rating:
Summary: A Book That Stays With You
Review: Not many stories, real or imagined, grip a reader like Julie Salamon's "Facing The Wind." I knew where the story would end - or so I thought. The murder is revealed on the book jacket, but the tale really lies in whether or not Bob achieves forgiveness and repentance. Does he deserve the second life he finds with his wife, clearly a damaged soul herself? What responsibility is shared by the doctors who released Bob and failed to monitor his intake of psychotropic drugs? How can we, The Moral Reader, react when a man who murders his family, including a helpless, disabled boy, declares he cannot feel remorse since he was mentally disturbed when the act was committed but at the same time declare his love for the dead? This is a difficult story to read, and it is equally difficult to let it go. Salamon paints a portrait of a family that showed one face to the world, and another to itself. How many of us do the same? The sad details of Mary's clothing when she died and the aiming of the blows to prevent pain linger as the reader struggles to decide what kind of man Bob really is. There are questions left unanswered in this telling, but the final image of a young girl who adores her daddy reveals the complex nature of the emotion humans call love. Just how much of love is forgiveness? I disagree with the readers who state that interviews with Bob were required. Salamon gathers her facts via those who knew Bob best. The story is not really about Bob, but about those around him. Their perception, as the saying goes, is the reality. Salamon captured my attention with "The Devil's Candy," and I look forward to more of her literary non-fiction.
Rating:
Summary: Gripping True Crime
Review: Julie Salamon's Facing the Wind is a gripping true crime work that tells the heartbreaking story of a man who murders his wife and three children (one of them being severely disabled) and is subsequently found not guilty by reason of insanity. Bob and Mary Rove were the perfect couple, everyone loved them. Even when their second son Christopher is born with serious disabilities, Bob and Mary were a terrific couple. Bob was incredibly supportive of Christopher and worked hard to help him develop. Somewhere along the way, though, something in Bob snapped. He sought help, but found none and wound up murdering his family with a baseball bat. He was found not guilty by reason of insanity and ultimately was given another chance to find happiness. Did he deserve it? Was the insanity defense proper in his case? Should someone else have seen this coming? Should he had been able to continue to practice law? Those and other moral questions will certainly run through your mind as you read this work. For the most part, Facing the Wind is a gripping and engaging work. My only complaint is that Salamon spends much more time than necessary focussing on a support group that Bob and Mary belonged to. She details the lives of the members of the group and the problems they encountered with their children. I realize that the group was the way Salamon connected with the story in the first place, but the sections concerning the support group could have used a little editing. Despite that one drawback, this is an interesting and thought-provoking work.
Rating: 
Summary: Shame on Salamon and the NYT Book Review, too!
Review: Extremely irresponsible journalism. Salamon failed to do complete research and ended up painting a one-sided picture, omitting so many facts and so much information that it is impossible to glean any real understanding of the people involved in this story. What I find even worse, though, is that this book is marketed to families of medically involved children thanks to its handy premise that the stress of raising such a child can cause an otherwise good man to snap, with tragic results. What an exploitative way to make a few bucks (and, hopefully, just a few)! Nobody---least of all the author---seems to know what was wrong with Bob Rowe. Was he schizophrenic? Bi-polar? A sociopath? Whatever his malady, I am quite sure it was not the stress of raising a disabled son that propelled him into homicidal mania. Yikes. Shame on Salamon, and the New York Times Book Review, too.
Rating:
Summary: First Half Excellent...Second Half Tedious
Review: Let me say I adore Julie Salamon's writing. The Devil's Candy was an awesome book. And I adored the first half of this book which was engagingly written and exhaustively researched. The stories of the women in the group and their children were touching. But something happens after the deaths of the Rowe family. The book becomes a compendium of Robert Rowe's attempts to become a lawyer again...and the whole Colleen section was just maddening. She comes off as completely unlikeable and we're never quite clear what she sees in this man who took out his whole family. This book is a mess...and not worth recommending at all.
Rating:
Summary: Exhaustively researched, ambitious, maddening
Review: I have no idea what Julie Salamon thinks about Robert Rowe and whether he should have spent more time incarcerated for his unspeakable crimes. That's a compliment. This book sets a new standard for impartial reporting; in addition it is very well researched. That said, I think the book fails in its broad take on the subject -- Ms. Salamon's focus gets blurred and skips around a lot between the mothers group, the Rowe family's life and death, and Mr. Rowe's relationship with his second wife, etc., etc. Ultimately I came away unsatisfied, feeling as if I had missed a lot of each disparate thread of the story. But perhaps the complexity of this particular story can never be fully told. In all, this is an ambitious, worthwhile book.
Rating:
Summary: A lucky purchase
Review: I don't know why I bought this book, but I am glad I did. I was drawn into the plight of these parents and to the Rowe family. Having mixed emotions about Bob Rowes "second life," I struggled to find a space where I could fogive Bob and to accept his ability to move on. A compelling story that makes one think about the extremes of forgiveness.
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