April Balascio’s memoir, RAISED BY A SERIAL KILLER, is in many ways a confession. It’s not because Balascio herself has any crimes to confess, especially not relative to her father, Edward Wayne Edwards, but because of the guilt she carries for turning him in for murder. At times, the book feels apologetic, in particular when she discusses how her siblings and other family members felt about her sharing what she long suspected with the authorities.

Ironically, Edwards was known for some confessions of his own in the form of a television appearance and his horrific self-published book. Balascio’s story is a revision of her father’s own, one founded on truth and compassion, shedding light on darkness, as opposed to the chaos Edwards sowed wherever he went and whatever he did. Needless to say, RAISED BY A SERIAL KILLER is difficult to read, and surely it was even more difficult to write. It is an honest examination of a family scarred by abuse and the crimes they didn’t know about that colored their already violent lives.

"This is a disturbing portrait of a lifelong bad guy, as well as a tale of faith and optimism in the face of extreme pain."

True crime aficionados will be familiar with Edwards, and podcast junkies may have listened to “The Clearing,” the compelling series that follows Balascio as she tried not just to understand her father’s known crimes, but to seek connections to unsolved cases. RAISED BY A SERIAL KILLER covers much of the same territory as the podcast but also goes into further detail on the day-to-day, year-to-year life of the Edwards family. That life was horrific, to say the least.

Balascio was the oldest of her father’s five children with her mother. As a child, she recognized him as the larger-than-life figure that he was --- gregarious, frenetic, strong and even charming to some. But he also was quick to anger and violence, almost always inappropriate behind closed doors, and he kept his wife and children in a heightened state of uncertainty and fear for years. Over a long period of time, they lived in trailers, tents, dilapidated houses and dingy apartments, moving almost every year, sometimes several times a year. They left towns with no warning, more than once with their homes literally in flames. As Balascio grows up, she begins to intellectually and emotionally understand more about her father, especially after reading his highly disturbing autobiography. But he remains dangerously enigmatic to her.

Edwards’ rap sheet was long, even before his children were born, and often he was the primary suspect in many other crimes --- theft, arson and murder --- over the many years that he was raising his family. But with clues from her father’s book, a list of towns they lived in and traveled through, and her own memories, Balascio starts to map out his life against various cold cases across the country. When she calls the police on him, she threatens fragile familial relationships but helps resolve crimes, bringing justice and some peace of mind to victims’ families.

RAISED BY A SERIAL KILLER is a tough read; it’s graphic, heartbreaking and frightening. But Balascio’s aims are clearly to bring resolution, in addition to the aforementioned confessions, and readers will feel the import of that for her, cheering her fortitude as an adult and her childhood strength and resilience. This is a disturbing portrait of a lifelong bad guy, as well as a tale of faith and optimism in the face of extreme pain.