Facing the Wind: A True Story of Tragedy and Reconciliation
Julie Salamon
May 2017 · Brilliance Audio · Narrated by Sandra Burr
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10 hr 47 min
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Bob Rowe and his wife Mary worked hard to build their American dream. A suburban home, barbecues in the summer, and a fast track corporate job made their life look ideal to outsiders. Yet they faced one of the most difficult challenges for a couple: their son Christopher was born severely handicapped and disabled. As a family, they managed to navigate through the tough times by being hands-on parents. Their efforts were emboldened by a group of extraordinary women - all of whom also had disabled children - who acted as a support system for one another.
Yet something slowly began to happen to Rowe . . . His deceased mother's voice started to reverberate in his head instructing him to murder his family; reality disintegrated and a new job was lost when it proved too overwhelming. Finally a short stay in a psychiatric hospital did nothing to quell his sudden volatility . . . In a horribly violent act, he killed his wife and children.
Seen through the eyes and thoughts of Rowe's friends and second wife (whom he married on release from the psychiatric hospital where he spent just a few years for the murder of his family), Salamon braids the story of a man's roller coaster life (from ideal family man to murderer to someone struggling for redemption) with the touching and heroic tales of the mothers who were left looking on in shock at the tragedy no one ever could have anticipated.
Yet something slowly began to happen to Rowe . . . His deceased mother's voice started to reverberate in his head instructing him to murder his family; reality disintegrated and a new job was lost when it proved too overwhelming. Finally a short stay in a psychiatric hospital did nothing to quell his sudden volatility . . . In a horribly violent act, he killed his wife and children.
Seen through the eyes and thoughts of Rowe's friends and second wife (whom he married on release from the psychiatric hospital where he spent just a few years for the murder of his family), Salamon braids the story of a man's roller coaster life (from ideal family man to murderer to someone struggling for redemption) with the touching and heroic tales of the mothers who were left looking on in shock at the tragedy no one ever could have anticipated.
Bob Rowe and his wife Mary worked hard to build their American dream. A suburban home, barbecues in the summer, and a fast track corporate job made their life look ideal to outsiders. Yet they faced one of the most difficult challenges for a couple: their son Christopher was born severely handica...
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About the author
Julie Salamon was born on July 10, 1953 in Cincinnati Ohio. She was raised in Seaman, a rural village located in Adams County, Ohio. After graduating from Tufts University, she moved to New York City, where she received her law degree from New York University. While in law school, she was a summer intern at the Pittsburgh Press and then the Wall Street Journal, where she was hired as a reporter in the New York bureau (covering commodities and then banking) upon graduation from NYU. Salamon became the Journal's film critic in 1983, a job she held for 11 years. In 2000, she became the television critic for the New York Times, and then a writer in the arts section until 2005. Salamon has written a series of award-winning books, including Facing the Wind (2001), The Net of Dreams (1996), and Rambam¿s Ladder (2003). The Devil¿s Candy (1991) is considered a Hollywood classic about filmmaking gone awry, and her novella, The Christmas Tree, (1996) was a New York Times best-seller and has been translated into eight languages. Her new book, "Wendy and the Lost Boys," a biography of Pulitzer-prize winning playwright Wendy Wasserstein, will be published by The Penguin Press on August 22, 2011. Salamon was a reporter and the film critic for The Wall Street Journal for many years, and then a culture writer on the staff of The New York Times. Her journalism has appeared in The New Yorker, Vanity Fair, Vogue, Bazaar, and The New Republic. She has been an adjunct professor at NYU¿s Tisch School of the Arts. For her 2008 work Hospital she was chosen to be a Kaiser Media Fellow for 2006-2007. She was inducted into the Ohio Women's Hall of Fame in September 2008. In the summer of 2010, she was a writing fellow at the MacDowell Colony in Peterborough, New Hampshire, where she completed her 2011 biography of Wendy Wasserstein, "Wendy and the Lost Boys."
Julie Salamon was born on July 10, 1953 in Cincinnati Ohio. She was raised in Seaman, a rural village located in Adams County, Ohio. After graduating from Tufts University, she moved to New York City, where she received her law degree from New York University. While in law school, she was a summe...
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