The Family Next Door

May 6, 2019
On a January day in 2018, an emaciated teenage girl in Perris, Calif., escaped from the home where she and her 12 siblings were cruelly and systematically abused. Writing in a candid, unemotional prose style, bestseller Glatt (The Lost Girls) tells the devastating story of Louise and David Turpin, who, following their daughter’s 911 call, were charged with numerous counts of torture, imprisonment, and “willful child cruelty” inflicted against their children, who ranged in age from two to 29. Glatt unflinchingly details the victims’ home circumstances, including being chained to their beds, beaten, starved, and deprived of contact with the outside world. Unsettlingly, the Turpins behaved in a normal, at times lighthearted way in front of outsiders; the children’s experiences beyond the confines of home were restricted to bizarre family trips to Disneyland and to Las Vegas, where the couple routinely renewed their wedding vows. Whatever initial empathy one may feel for Louise—victimized herself as a child—dissipates as the narrative becomes less a depiction of traumatic reenactment and more an exploration of senseless depravity. This chilling portrayal of abuse and secrecy may leave readers looking differently at their neighbors. Agent: Jane Dystel, Dystel, Goderich & Bourret.

June 1, 2019

In January 2018, a 911 call led to the discovery of the Turpin siblings, 13 children and adults between the ages of two and 29, who were being held and tortured by their parents inside a suburban family home in California. The story was horrifying, even more so because the physical, verbal, and psychological abuse had continued for so long without anyone suspecting. The children lived in filth--they were fed once a day, denied schooling and proper hygiene, and chained to their beds for weeks or months. The parents, Louise and David Turpin, bought the children expensive gifts they couldn't play with and tortured them with pies that grew moldy on the counter while the children were forbidden to touch them. Most distressingly, Louise and David didn't seem to understand what they were doing was wrong; in fact, they dreamed of starring in their own reality TV series. Glatt (The Lost Girls; My Sweet Angel) compellingly delves into the history of the sexual abuse Louise suffered as a child and discusses the psychology of abuse survivors. VERDICT The Turpins' recent guilty plea to 14 counts of torture and child abuse makes this a timely account for true crime fans.--Deirdre Bray Root, formerly with MidPointe Lib. Syst., OH

Copyright 2019 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

June 15, 2019
Horrific account of a headline-making case of criminal abuse that shook a California community. The cliché screams out at the beginning: They seemed to be such normal people, and, as a neighbor said, "nobody here knew they had twelve kids....I thought there was just one or two." The 13 children in the Turpin household in an otherwise ordinary Southern California suburb, though, were anything but normal. They were held captive in their home for years, beaten, chained to furniture, sexually abused, forbidden to wash, fed a diet of frozen burritos and peanut butter or bologna sandwiches meal after meal. Infractions that merited corporal punishment included playing with toys or looking out the window. The children had never been to a dentist. The parents/perpetrators had themselves experienced abuse and trauma, a family history that Glatt (The Lost Girls: The True Story of the Cleveland Abductions and the Incredible Rescue of Michelle Knight, Amanda Berry, and Gina DeJesus, 2015, etc.) traces over generations. There were exceedingly odd twists. The parents bought their children 10 brand-new, expensive bicycles and then "lined them up under the carport with the price tags on the handlebars and stickers on the wheels for all the neighbors to see"--but forbade the children from leaving the house to play with them. The story is creepy, with a few twists--e.g., after they were freed, it developed that the children were musically adept, singing being one of the few things they could do in captivity. Train-wreck attention-getter that it is, the book is longer than the story warrants, and it calls out for comparative treatment--for case studies of similar crimes, that is, and any conclusions that can be drawn about the perpetrators other than that they're monstrous, which seems abundantly clear from the first page. It's hard to imagine wanting to read such a story, but devotees of true crime will be drawn to this narrative.

COPYRIGHT(2019) Kirkus Reviews, ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.

July 1, 2019
Veteran true-crime writer Glatt (The Lost Girls, 2015) spares no gruesome detail in this nightmare-inducing account of the 13 siblings, aged 2 to 29, held captive by their parents. Louise and David Turpin chained some of their offspring to beds or locked them in cages. They homeschooled them, allowed showers just once a year, and fed them just one lousy meal a day. Strangely, they took the children, whose names all started with the letter J, to Disneyland and to Las Vegas, where they renewed their vows in the Elvis chapel. They also photographed them wearing Dr. Seuss Thing 1 through Thing 13 T-shirts. After Louise turned 40, the once-religious couple stopped attending church and started drinking, gambling, having affairs, and escalating their brutality towards their children. Finally, in January 2018, 17-year-old Jordan climbed out a window of the family's southern California home and called 911. Glatt's thoroughly researched and thoroughly disturbing book ends without an epilogue. The parents pled guilty to 14 felony counts, including cruelty, torture, and false imprisonment, and were sentenced to 25 years-to-life.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2019, American Library Association.)

June 15, 2019
Horrific account of a headline-making case of criminal abuse that shook a California community. The clich� screams out at the beginning: They seemed to be such normal people, and, as a neighbor said, "nobody here knew they had twelve kids....I thought there was just one or two." The 13 children in the Turpin household in an otherwise ordinary Southern California suburb, though, were anything but normal. They were held captive in their home for years, beaten, chained to furniture, sexually abused, forbidden to wash, fed a diet of frozen burritos and peanut butter or bologna sandwiches meal after meal. Infractions that merited corporal punishment included playing with toys or looking out the window. The children had never been to a dentist. The parents/perpetrators had themselves experienced abuse and trauma, a family history that Glatt (The Lost Girls: The True Story of the Cleveland Abductions and the Incredible Rescue of Michelle Knight, Amanda Berry, and Gina DeJesus, 2015, etc.) traces over generations. There were exceedingly odd twists. The parents bought their children 10 brand-new, expensive bicycles and then "lined them up under the carport with the price tags on the handlebars and stickers on the wheels for all the neighbors to see"--but forbade the children from leaving the house to play with them. The story is creepy, with a few twists--e.g., after they were freed, it developed that the children were musically adept, singing being one of the few things they could do in captivity. Train-wreck attention-getter that it is, the book is longer than the story warrants, and it calls out for comparative treatment--for case studies of similar crimes, that is, and any conclusions that can be drawn about the perpetrators other than that they're monstrous, which seems abundantly clear from the first page. It's hard to imagine wanting to read such a story, but devotees of true crime will be drawn to this narrative.

COPYRIGHT(2019) Kirkus Reviews, ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.