On the Farm: Robert William Pickton and the Tragic Story of Vancouver's Missing Women

I am a true crime junkie and this was a tough read - not, it turns out, for the grisly details (although there are a few of those, too) but for the relentless, depressing litany of women's lives falling apart and then being taken from them, and the police doing nothing about it. I found the trial almost worse than all the rest of it, though. The verdict the jury handed down is embarrassing.

But this is an outstanding book - detailed, meticulous, unceasingly sympathetic. With more than sixty missing women connected to the case, it could have been painfully dull, but Cameron treats each of those women with respect and paints a vivid picture of their lives and personalities. And, despite the outcome of the legal case, she gives a pretty show more good picture of Pickton, too (as unappealing as it is). show less

This book was amazing and amazingly heartbreaking. Where the book Butcher by Gary C. King tried to find Robert 'Willie' Pickton's past, this book takes an extensive look at every single victim and humanizes them to the reader. It was touching and all the more heart wrenching to read. But these kinds of books are NECESSARY to read. Evil exists in our world. This time some kind of unrelenting evil took over the Pickton farm. The Pickton Farm is an evil unto itself. And the reason we must look at places like these is to warn our daughters and sisters of the evils that lurk behind the supposed most harmless of looking people.

With everything in the news about Robert "Willy" Pickton, I decided it was time to read a definitive account of what happened. I've read "Missing Sarah" which I highly recommend - she was the niece of Jean Little, one of my favourite all-time authors and Sarah's sister used Sarah's writings to help tell her story. This book was broad and sometimes I couldn't figure out why the author drifted into rabbit holes at times but I really liked the way she fleshed out the stories of the women who went missing in Vancouver because they are the ones that should be remembered.