There a men who take women's lives and there are men who kill their souls. This is story about both but focuses on men who kill and the wome who love them
Celeste Brookstone has the perfect life on the surface. When her daughter takes a job with the Michigan prison system she fears for Pilar's safety. But Celeste is also glad Pilar is away from the hell on earth Marcus Brookstone has created within his own house.
Pilar Brookstone is an idealist and a brilliant doctor. She thinks she can change things and make prioners' lives better. And never, ever make the mistake her mother made.
Chad Wilbanks is a charming. handsome college graduate. He is also a serial killer seving life. Eight young women were his victims. Is he about to take a ninth?
Excerpt
Chapter One: Graduating
The serial killer was sentenced to life without parole on the same morning Pilar Brookstone graduated from medical school. Her mother shared the news as Pilar queued for the processional. Now, stepping away from the provost's handshake, the new Dr. Brookstone was still thinking about her mother's announcement. "Chad Wilbanks is permanently off the streets," Celeste had said as though presenting Pilar with an extra-special gift. "You'll feel safe enough to come home, at last."
On this of all days, Pilar didn't want to think about the murders or the man responsible This was her moment to concentrate on the diploma she clutched to her chest, the sweet triumph of a hard-won degree. But instead, memories of her friend Susan Mitchell rose up to block Pilar's view of her classmates. Chad Wilbanks had first charmed Susan, then brutally murdered her. Susan was a statistic now, one of eight young women Wilbank's victimized during a vicious two-year spree near the University of Michigan.
Would Pilar feel safe in either Ann Arbor or in her Gross Pointe Shores home now? True, she had left medical school there because of the murders, transferred to the University of Wisconsin after the first year. But Cleste's words brought no real comfort, because in the intervening years Pilar had come to realize fear of Chad Wilbanks was not the real reason she dreaded going home.
Professional Reviews
Fast=Paced Thriller
Fast-paced thriller, September 5, 2005
By
James G. Greenhill "Jim Greenhill" (Durango, CO USA) - See all my reviews
This review is from: Life Sentences (Mass Market Paperback)
Meet Pilar Brookstone.
From a prosperous family, she's alienated from her father. She is naively condescending about her mother, failing to see her strength. When she graduates medical school, her idealism prompts her to help prisoners rather than join a prosperous medical practice.
Pilar is the latest creation of Durango author Tekla Dennison Miller.
Pilar is a departure for Miller, whose previous two books - The Warden Wore Pink and A Bowl of Cherries - were memoirs. The first recounted Miller's 20-year career in the prison service. The second was about her childhood.
Miller draws on her corrections career for her first published novel.
Part character study, part thriller, the novel attempts to explain how an intelligent, good-looking, "good" woman could fall for the "bad" prison inmate who murdered her friend.
Pilar's attraction to Chad Wilbanks is a troubling parallel to her mother's attraction to her father.
It's easy to criticize the daughter's relationship with the inmate. It's a harder pill to swallow when the reader realizes that the mother's relationship with the doctor father is equally poisonous. Miller succeeds in showing how a selfish, greedy man seemingly successful to outsiders suffocates his wife's soul. Meanwhile, an outcast outsider nourishes his daughter's insecurities.
In Life Sentences, we get a look at the inside of a prison and an account of the phenomenon of women being attracted to murderous prison inmates.
It's a legitimate and fascinating phenomenon. I remember the women who lined up to visit Death Row inmates in Florida during an 18-month period in which I was visiting an inmate there, conducting inevitably stifled romances that sometimes resulted in marriages to men whose wives could never hope to live with them.
The success of Miller's novel lies in her ability to make Pilar a thoroughly likeable, successful woman whose reasons for loving a serial killer become understandable to the reader. Pilar Brookstone is no freak - she's a "normal" person whose love for a killer is somehow disturbingly easy to accept.
In pulling this off, Miller triumphs.
The novel is a fast-paced thriller populated by three-dimensional characters who stay with the reader long after the last page is turned.
The third book in the funny Silver Sisters Mysteries series. The twins and their 80 year-old mother and uncle get into trouble sleuthing in Sin City.
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