She looked like a grandmother. She buried like a predator.
Behind the lace curtains of 1426 F Street lived Dorothea Puente, warm smile, soft voice, a woman known for taking in the broken, the addicted, the elderly, and the discarded. But under the blossoms of her manicured garden lay a horror so carefully cultivated it deceived an entire city.
The Arsenic Widow: Beneath the Blossoms is a gripping, deeply researched portrait of America's most unlikely serial killer. Through meticulous storytelling, it reveals how Puente mastered the art of trust, wielded kindness as a weapon, and turned vulnerability into opportunity, until the soil finally gave up its secrets.
Chilling, poetic, and hauntingly intimate, this book pulls readers into the quiet dread of a house where meals came warm... and guests vanished without a sound.