April Balascio's Raised by a Serial Killer is an unflinching memoir that delves into how the author realized her father had murdered a series of people in the many towns the family lived in throughout the 1980s. She subsequently submitted her DNA to police and was instrumental in not only her father's arrest for the killing of a young Wisconsin couple but also in solving a string of other murders.
Raised by a Serial Killer details the harrowing childhoods Balascio and her four siblings endured at the hands of their father, Edward Wayne Edwards, who sometimes treated them with affection but could also be violently abusive. The family moved frequently from state to state, sometimes fleeing in the middle of the night. Even as a child, Balascio suspected that something was not as it should be. "I thought of Curtis and Chris, our friends in Florida. And the missing boy and girl we heard about in Doylestown. Then the missing teens in Watertown. And now this boy. Was the whole world really such a dangerous place? Or did it just seem to follow us?"
As an adult, Balascio couldn't shake her suspicions. Some late-night Internet searching for cold cases where the family had lived led to Balascio piecing together memories of her father turning up in strangely filthy clothing on the same night a young couple disappeared.
Raised by a Serial Killer is a brave and haunting true-crime memoir that will keep readers riveted to the page long past the point where justice has been served. --Elizabeth DeNoma, executive editor, DeNoma Literary Services, Seattle, Wash.