| Forever and Five Days |  | Author: Lowell Cauffiel
Publisher: Zebra
Category: Book
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Avg. Customer Rating:  18 reviews
Sales Rank: 2857201
Media: Paperback
Number Of Items: 1
Shipping Weight (lbs): 0.6
Dimensions (in): 4 x 4 x 1.2
ISBN: 0821742132
Dewey Decimal Number: 364.15230977456
EAN: 9780821742136
ASIN: 0821742132
Publication Date: July 1, 1993
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Condition: Binding is slightly damaged and/or book has some loose pages. No missing pages. 100% Money Back Guarantee. Shipped to over one million happy customers. Your purchase benefits world literacy!
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| Editorial Reviews:
Amazon.com
Cathy was the lively one--the bleached-blonde star of the nurses' aides' lunchroom--the one who enjoyed scripting an ever-changing soap opera from the lives of the nursing-home staff. Gwen was the pug-nosed newcomer with a little girl's dependency and desire to please: she doted on Cathy, and was honored to be chosen as her lover. They turned a respected Michigan nursing home into their playground for frivolous games and practical jokes. Then Cathy got worried that Gwen was cheating on her, so she suggested a love pact that would bind them together "forever and five days." Gwen carried out her wishes, and smothered five patients in their beds. It's a story with a large cast of characters--the employees of the nursing home, the individual patients and their loving families, the outsiders who wondered and worried. Lowell Cauffiel does a good job of letting us into their lives, and into the world of make-believe that allowed these murders to go unnoticed for so long.
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| Customer Reviews: Read 13 more reviews...
 Marvelous Depiction of True Evil! January 2, 2008
The author has done a brilliant job of creating for us a nightmarish true-life series of murders in a nursing home. We've all read occasional news stories of some nursing home employee or hospital worker being imprisoned for serially killing off patients. In this book, though, we're led to the evolution of two mentally unstable women who became lovers and then killers. We're led through the months of lover's fighting and quarrels and the games they played both in the nursing home and outside of it. What disturbed me most, though, was how devoted the lovers of one of the killers, Cathy, remained even after she was proven to be a killer. Her long-suffering husband continued loving her and taking her back even after she tried to murder him with a baseball bat. Even after he heard her confession of serial murders, he told no one until more than a year later. The lover of the second killer, Gwen, are equally hard to forgive. Her girlfriend, Robin, continued to ignore Gwen's repeated confession of mass murder and Robin destroyed valuable evidence that police needed in their case against Gwen. The author does an outstanding job of bringing this cast of killers and enablers to life. His other book, by the way, MASQUERADE, is a classic and I've read it several times. I like his style much better than Ann Rule, who spends pages and pages describing the weather and the geographical background of her murders which become highly boring. Bravo to Lowell Cauffiel for doing such a superb job once again!
Now I'll just have to buy it March 5, 2007
0 out of 1 found this review helpful
With all the bad reviews and remarks about the grammar and typos... I'll have to go buy the book now. The ones who are putting the book down because of the typos etc., come on.... you still understood what Mr. cauffiel was saying right? These comments make the person want to buy the book to see what the hype is all about. Great job bad reviewers... more sales for Mr. Cauffiel.
Keeps the Reader in Suspense November 16, 2006
1 out of 1 found this review helpful
Although it is clear from the start that the two women are responsible for the murders of the nursing home patients, the author does keep back some details until the end. The shifting accounts from witnesses and interviews opens new thinking as the tale unfolds.
I had to really mentally shift gears at the end once all the details were laid out and even then I'm glad I wasn't on the jury.
Some of the incidents cropped up over and over, but I began to realize the different points of views given to each retelling. Sifting out what was real, what was staged, and who was covering for someone makes it a really complex case.
True crime readers will find it worth wading through.
I should know I was there. November 23, 2005
4 out of 5 found this review helpful
Catherine Carpenter, that is how I know Cathy Wood. I know her personally because you see, I am the Debbie/David of her imagination. I am Debbie. Not David. I can tell you from experience, Catherine May Carpenter-Wood probably did the killings herself. One day while driving along in my car, she asked me if I ever wondered what it would feel like to stab someone, and that she wondered how it would feel as the knife cut into their skin. This gave me the creeps and after I dropped her off at her house, I never went back nor saw her again. She knew I was gay, she knew I was a girl and not a boy. I was out of the closet to my parents at the age of 13 and everyone that knew me knew I was gay. Lowell Caufield said in his documentary that he believed that Cathy made up a lot of things to cover up the fact that she was gay. He is right. She covered up the fact of my being a girl to her friends and family so that she would not be further mocked. Being a heavy girl, she got a lot of razzing from others. On my 28th birthday, my girlfriend and I were at the carousel bar. A drink was sent over to my table with a note on it saying "Remember me, Cathy". Of course I had no idea who it was from, it had been so many years later. Soon a large figure stepped in front of me as I was making my way up to the dance floor and it was her. I was in shock to say the least but she was smiling at me with that snear grin of hers as if to say Uh huh its me. She invited my girlfriend and I to her house and gave us directions. She said it was for an after the bar party. I didnt really want to go but my girlfriend said why not and maybe it would wake her up a little bit to be around others. We had to drive back home which was 85 miles north. When my girlfriend and I arrived, there wasnt anyone at home but Cathy herself. She led me down to her basement to "show me photos of her daughter". I believe that if it werent for the fact that I praised and showed admiration over her beautiful little daughter, I would have died in that basement with my girlfriend tired and sleeping out in our car. Gwen entered the house just as I was leaving. She was obviously drunk. She shot grim looks at Cathy and tossed her head in my direction. I saw Cathy shrug her shoulders and I as I looked back on that moment for years I knew that there was something that was suppose to happen in that house that night. I summed all of the nights events up to one thing. 1. No one was there but Cathy when we arrived. 2. Cathy led me to the basement to show me photos of her child. 3. The look that Gwen gave Cathy when she realized that I was still there or rather still alive. 4. The creeped out feeling I had the whole way home and conversed with my sleepy girlfriend about it in the car on the way back. I believe they conspired to kill me that night along with my girlfriend. I also believe that my girlfriend staying in the car to sleep was one part of the deal they hadnt counted on. I consider myself lucky to be alive. After hearing about their arrests on the news almost 4 months later, I knew in my heart that all my feelings about that night were real. Cathy is a brilliant, manipulative mind playing person and I believe that Gwen Graham and her should have switched places as far as sentencing. I dont believe that Gwen is Innocent but I believe with all my heart and soul that Catherine Wood is responsible for more than one of the deaths at Alpine Manor Nursing Home. The mind games she played were only a part of Catherine Wood. She also liked to play with people's lives by making up things about them to see the outcome of it all. I am hoping that the parole board sees through Cathy and decides to let her ride out the 40 years instead of parolling her this year. I can see the lies pour out as I watch her on the documentary. Only those of us who knew Cathy in person could actually tell when she was lying and when she was telling the truth. She tries to look you in the eyes when she speaks to you hoping that you will believe her. She told me that once a long time ago about lying to her parents. I hope that Cathy stays in therepy after her release for the sake of her child, and her family as well as herself. I feel for the families of all her victims. Coincedentally I worked at Alpine Manor for a day in 1984. I was horrified because I saw first hand some abuse that was going on and I immediately quit, but it was nothing as horrific as what these two women carried out. I could say more about this woman and tell you a lot of stories about how as a teenager she manipulated her friends and family, but I'll save it for my novel. Thank you Mr. Caufield for mentioning my telephone call to Ken Kolker in your book. I hope you will write a follow up book about all the mind games Catherine Wood has been playing while in prison. I'm sure she has and it would fill another book.
To the reviewer April 27, 2005
1 out of 1 found this review helpful
This book was wonderful! To the reviewer from Australia that was turned off by the book's (grammer) that would be grammar!
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