The Women Are Not Fine : The untold story of the women behind the greatest mass poisoning of the 20th century

'A moving story of desperation, violence and survival' HELEN LEWIS, author of Difficult Women'Enthralling . . . A fascinating read' STEPHANIE COONTZ, author of Marriage, a HistoryThe dark history of a poisonous sisterhoodThe women of Nagyrév are desperate. They're abused by their husbands. They are feeding their newborns to livestock. At the turn of the 20th century, in the village of Nagyrév, Hungary, midwife Zsuzsanna Fazekas was more than a caretaker - she was a confidante.She helped poor women give birth; she assisted them with abortions; and she listened.Their stories were the same: husbands who drank, who beat them, who made their lives unbearable. In response, Auntie Zsuzsi asked one question: "Why bother with them?"Her solution was arsenic.Soon, women began slipping this concoction, made by dissolving flypaper in water, into their husbands' porridge, stews, and brandy. And over the next twenty years, the quiet village became the epicenter of one of the deadliest poisoning epide