I’m not usually one for non-fiction books, but this one caught my eye. It’s about a woman who grew up living next door to Ted Kaczynski. For those who don’t know, that’s the man who turned out to be the Unabomber. I went into this book not knowing a whole lot except for snippets I vaguely remember hearing through news reports growing up. It turned out to be a fascinating book filled with the complications that arise when you examine our childhood through your adult viewpoints.
Before I dive into my review, here’s the book summary, courtesy of Book Forward:
In her new memoir – which has been praised by FBI agents, documentarians and even family members of the infamous Unabomber – author Jamie Gehring provides a haunting account of the 16 years she and her family lived closer than anyone to Ted Kaczynski, the Unabomber, sharing their Montana land, their home, and their dinner table with a hermit who had a penchant for murder. “Madman in the Woods” (April 19, 2022, Diversion Books) is Gehring’s investigative quest 25 years later to reclaim a piece of her childhood by answering the questions: why, how?
As a child in Lincoln, Montana, in the 1980s and ’90s, Jamie Gehring had no idea that Ted Kaczynski—the self-sustaining hermit in the adjacent cabin—was anything more than the neighbor who brought her painted rocks as a gift. Ted was simply Ted, and erratic behavior, surprise visits, and chilling events while she was riding horses or helping her dad at his sawmill were dismissed because he was “just the odd hermit.” He was, in fact, the Unabomber, for 17 years mailing explosives to strangers, the longest-running domestic terrorist in American history.
As an adult with this knowledge, the innocence of her youth robbed, Gehring needed to reconcile her lived experience with the evil that hid in plain sight. In this book, through years of research probing Ted’s personal history, his writings, his secret coded crime journals, her own correspondence with him in his Supermax prison cell, plus interviews with others close to Kaczynski, Gehring unearths the complexity, mystery, and tragedy of her childhood with the madman in the woods. And she discovers a shocking revelation—she and her family were in Kaczynski’s crosshairs.
A work of intricately braided research, journalism, and personal memories, this book is a chilling response to the question: Do you really know your neighbor?
And now for my review!
Like I said, this turned out to be a really interesting book. What the author does so well is get us back into the mind frame of her family, the community, and her own childhood self as they all engage with this unknowingly dangerous man. I really felt like I was getting to know her and even another side of the man behind all those acts of violence.
I’m not much of a memoir reader, but this is one I highly recommend. You jump back in time between her childhood to her current self that unfolds the information she learns about her former neighbor. She also includes some of his journal entries, which slowly become more violent over time. Her interviews with those who were close to him and the case were fascinating. I felt like I was brought right back into the moment.
I absolutely recommend this one!
About the Author, Jamie Gehring
Jamie Gehring is a Montana native who grew up sharing a backyard with Ted Kaczynski, the man widely known as the Unabomber. She was featured in Netflix’s Unabomber—In His Own Words where she discussed her family’s role in Ted’s capture. She earned her BA in visual communications and has worked in financial advising and graphic design. She currently lives in Denver, Colorado with her husband and three children. You can find out more about Jamie on her website: www.jamiegehring.com
That sounds fascinating.
It really is!
Thank you so much for your review!
Thank you for coming by! It’s a wonderful book you wrote!
I haven’t read this, it sounds very interesting. Adding this to my TBR List! Thank You!
It really is an excellent book!