Lizzie Borden, The Girl with the Pansy Pin

by Michael Thomas Brimbau

Lizzie Borden and her sister Emma lived a life of privilege and entitlement, with wealth and social status far beyond their neighbors. But most pleasures were just window dressing, dangling beyond their reach. Riches were kept quarantined by a frugal patriarch, unable or unwilling to change his scrimping ways. As they became older, Lizzie and her sister grew restless, aching for a more opulent life—to reside on the Hill, in a big house, amongst their peers, and Fall River’s finest families. Now their father was planning to give all his wealth away—to his wife, no doubt. And, why not? Abby Durfee Borden had been a devoted mother to his two ungrateful daughters. Andrew Jackson Borden had no intention of moving to the Hill or abandoning the home he had purchased for his wife. Discord and turmoil soon began to ferment and fester. Lizzie expressed concern that “Father has enemies and I fear that they will burn the house down around us.”On a sultry August morning, in the naked light of day, someone entered 92 Second Street and brutally hacked and murdered Andrew and Abby Borden. Soon the finger of guilt pointed to Lizzie. But she loved her father. He meant everything to her. The gold ring she had lovingly given him and that he always wore said as much. She would never have harmed him. Or would she?The Girl with the Pansy Pin tells the gripping story of a desirable and vivacious young Victorian woman desperately longing for adventure and a lavish life. Instead, she wasted away in a stale, modest existence, in a father’s foregone reality, one with little chance of ever discovering love, happiness, or fulfillment. Now they have charged poor Lizzie with double murder.

546 pages, Kindle Edition

First published August 1, 2013

Reviews

[Richard Behrens · Rating 5 out of 5]

I devoutly devour any Lizzie Borden fiction that takes its subject seriously enough to show as much Fall River as it shows Lizzie Borden. Michael Brimbau's novel, Lizzie Borden, The Girl With the Pansy Pin, is one of the most serious minded, historically rooted and authentic feeling Lizzie Borden novels I've read so far. Some may have problems with the pacing and the dense detail of middle-class life in a Victorian American mill town, but I'm a Lizzie Borden and Fall River junkie and Brimbau's novel is satisfying. It challenged my imaginations with a very complex Lizzie. She is a fully realized character and the wide breadth of the novel is necessary to explore her. If you have studied the more honest non-fiction on Lizzie like Parallel Lives, the tour de force history of Lizzie Borden against the background of her time and place written by the curators of the Fall River Historical Society, the Lizzie that Brimbau has painted would seem extremely plausible to you, even if you disagree about her guilt. Lizzie Borden, the Girl with the Pansy Pin is full of elegant prose and shocking surprises and is a must-read for anyone who wants to explore Lizzie Borden in fiction.

[Stefani Koorey · Rating 5 out of 5]

If you like reading about Lizzie Borden, you must get this book! It presents a throughly engrossing tale of Borden case and Lizzie's relationships with her family and friends.

We are privy to Lizzie's story from a fresh perspective. Lizzie is a woman who longs to be a free spirit, but is stuck in an era where women are relegated to the persist of home and family. Lizzie is bold and adventurous. She rings perfectly true.

I highly recommend this book!