In the Best of Families: The Anatomy of a True Tragedy

by Dennis McDougal

Book Overview

Ronald Reagan's personal attorney Roy Miller was a California success story. The Miller family's friends could never have imagined the horror and darkness that were to follow as Michael, the Miller's... This description may be from another edition of this product.

• Format: Hardcover
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0446516724
• ISBN13: 9780446516723
• Release Date: January 1994
• Publisher: Warner Books (NY)
• Length: 330 Pages
• Weight: 1.30 lbs.
• Dimensions: 1.2" x 6.3" x 9.3"

Customer Reviews

It can happen to you

Both my brothers have psychotic illnesses. It took years for both to be diagnosed. There were frequent bouts with alcoholism, drugs, arrests and nasty behavior. I hate to say it, but I moved thousands of miles away while my parents attempted to come to their aid continuously. In a review at this site the writer wonders how the father (Roy) could let it happen when he had an important job. You'd be surprised how numb you can get to aberrant behavior. Two years ago, via genealogical research, I discovered a maternal great aunt and great uncle institutionalized with paranoid schizophrenia. My mother never knew. In the early 1900's the treatment included religious instruction. Ha!If you're interested in the real thing, this is the book for you.

Hit closer to home than any book that I have ever read

My husband has been diagnosed with a type of schizoprenia, known as shizo-affective disored. I found this book to be very true to how it feels to live with somone with such a mental illness. The "episodes" that occured in the book have been simialur to the ones that have occured with my husband. The book was a very knowladgable book and gave me some insight as far as how schizoprnia can be treated inappopratally, and how if you wait too long it will be too late. For my husband has been in and out of the local state mental insitae more than once. I just belive that it is finding the right medication to go along witht the illnees, that makes a differance. I just really can't say enough about the book and how it made me feel as though I wasn't the only one alone.

How does one cope with such tragedy?

I had never heard of this story before reading the book. A well-to-do, "perfect" family is shattered when one son dies by overdose and the surviving son rapes and murders (or murders, then rapes) his own mother! How does the father cope with such devastation, having lost his wife and both sons (the murderer is still alive but institutionalized)? My 11-yr-old son died four years ago from a self-inflicted gunshot, and I am still trying to figure out how to live my life. I gave this book an inflated four stars because while it was quite good, it did drag at times and I even left it to read another book (twice) and then went back to it. So it took me a long time to finish. Right now I am reading "And The Sea Will Tell" which is ten times more riveting -- can't put that one down. But I feel that "In the Best of Families" deserves four stars because of the sheer tragedy of this poor family, and I would read another book by this auther.