The writing in this book plainly stinks. The only reason it made it to print is it confirmed some Manhattan editor's insecure and snide prejudice about New Jersey. To paint the Barnegat Bay in this sick and toxic light is a crime. The author makes several flagrant errors in her geography and chronology, and in other places describes things, like her father walking on Reich Farm, that could not possibly have occurred. It is a shame that she has spent her life so sick, but that surely has a lot to do with her mental anguish and alcohol and drug abuse, and little to do with these paranoid fantasies of Toms River and Barnegat Bay being poisonous. I am just thankful I have not been forced to read her poetry, I'm sure it's equally as solipsistic, whiny and delusional.