Raised by a serial killer Discovering the truth about my father

Balascio's memoir is categorized as true crime, but that does not mean it is not a thriller. Balascio always wondered about her chaotic upbringing, in particular "the rumors of missing people, of bodies found" in the towns where she and her family lived. Turns out, those bodies were the work of her father, Edward Wayne Edwards, a former stickup artist and fugitive (in 1961, he was on the FBI's Ten Most Wanted List) who eventually settled down to raise a family and become a killer. Edwards murdered five people from 1977 to 1996, one of whom was his own foster son. Killers' families rarely speak in detail about their loved one's misdeeds, which makes this book a key sociological text, as well as a literary gem. Edwards isn't as famous as, say, Ted Bundy or Jeffrey Dahmer, but readers intrigued by the latter two will be just as gripped by Balascio's tale.

In this chilling debut, The Clearing podcast host Balascio recounts her growing realization that her father, Edward Wayne Edwards, was a murderer. Balascio was born in 1969, and her childhood was marked by frequent relocations across the East Coast and Midwest. It was also marked by chronic abuse: Edwards, a convicted bank robber at the time he married Balascio's mother, frequently beat his wife and children. After Balascio started a family of her own and lost touch with her parents, she remained haunted by her childhood. Vague memories that her family's stints in various cities coincided with reports of people going missing in those places led her, in 2009, to look up Watertown, Wis. She found reports about the 1980 double murder of teenagers who were last seen alive at a hotel where Edwards worked. Balascio called the cold case hotline, setting in motion an investigation that led to the 76-year-old Edwards's arrest that same year, and a dogged quest by law enforcement and amateur sleuths to establish what other killings he might be responsible for. Balascio's blunt, conversational prose allows the horrors of her situation to register without melodrama or overstatement. Readers will be riveted by this frank and frightening account. Agent: Jennifer Gates, Aevitas Creative Management. (Dec.)