“No one could possess a shred of doubt that Olalla’s most famous institution was the sanitarium up on the heights.”

I added Starvation Heights to my list of books to read back in 2017 but it wasn’t until my current run of true crime reads that it made its way in front of my eyeballs. Part of me, a not insignificant part of me, wishes that I had picked this book up seven years ago and read it then, I think I might have enjoyed it more if I had. Or if I had not read it immediately following The League of Lady Poisoners.  

The story at the heart of the book is fascinating, and I can see why so many people have rated it four or five stars in the 20 years since its publication. But I think it’s crucial to separate the importance and significance of the story being told from the way it is being presented (although also difficult to do, and I think I fail at as often as I succeed, I would guess). The criminal case surrounding the death of Claire Williamson in remote Washington state in 1911 following a “fasting treatment” by Dr. Linda Burfield Hazzard highlights how little the medical industry was regulated even in the age of licensing, and how greed could unleash evil in some, hoodwink others for crimes to be perpetuated in plain sight, and the struggle to get a case persecuted in the first place, even with a survivor ready to testify. 

My problem with Gregg Olson’s work is not the story he chose to explore but rather in how he goes about it. Olson’s an excellent writer who draws incredibly clear pictures of all the major players in this tale, but his structure pulls all suspense out of the book, and he spends quite a bit of time rehashing information. This book clocks in at over 400 pages and it could have easily been 100 pages shorter with tighter editing or 200 longer if the epilogue was fleshed out like the previous three sections. Also, for a work which very obviously pulls from court records and primary sources it is not sourced – no footnotes, no chapter notes, no bibliography. Olson lays out dozens of institutions, repositories, and individuals who contributed to his research in the Author’s Note and Acknowledgement, but almost none of it can be followed by the curious, and nothing is directly linked to the 400 pages that preceded it.