Jane Nelson “snaps” and tries to drown her two children in the kitchen sink. Her son Simon dies, her daughter Sarah survives, and Jane is placed in a mental institution after being found not guilty by reason of insanity. However, since society can neither understand nor tolerate flawed motherhood, it will go to great lengths to find extenuating circumstances to explain a mother’s crime.

Tom Nelson, the stunned and grieving husband and father, becomes a convenient scapegoat. As high-profile cases in recent years demonstrated, husbands are expected to know whether or not a wife under stress is a clear and present danger to her children. So Tom is charged with failing to protect his family from his wife.

In “Janeology,” as in life, Tom and his lawyer Dave take as a given that the evidence used in Jane’s trial to demonstrate that she was insane will be brought into Tom’s trial and used against him. The prosecution will argue that if Jane was crazy enough to kill her children, Tom should have noticed this fact and done something to keep Simon and Sarah out of harm’s way. How could he not have known?

Tom asks himself this question many times even before he is charged. He also wonders what happened to Jane, the loving wife and mother, to bring her to such a point. In her exceptionally well-written, carefully plotted and inventive novel, Karen Harrington considers where blame begins and ends and what, if anything, will bring us closure.
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Note: I’m re-posting a review I wrote earlier this year as a response to the news that the novel’s publisher has closed its doors. Fortunately, its books will continue to be available on Amazon and other booksellers until the end of the year. See also my review of another wonderful Kunati book, Rosemary Poole-Carter’s Women of Magdalene set during and after the Civil War.
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Malcolm
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