In the early 1880s, Brynhild Størset, an impoverished young maid-of-all-work, left Norway for America in search of a new life. After a brief spell living with her older sister Nellie in Chicago, she married a Norwegian man, Mads Sørensen, and killed him. Then she married Peder Gunness, another Norwegian, and killed him too. After Peder, she advertised in the lonely hearts pages for other men and killed them as well – possibly as many as 30 – butchering their bodies and burying the dismembered remains in her yard.
Such are the grisly facts of the life of the woman variously billed as “America’s first female serial killer”, Lady Bluebeard, Hell’s Princess and the black widow of La Porte. Her notoriety has earned her a place in the Guinness World Records and fascinated true crime fans for more than a century. She has inspired ballads and pamphlets and nonfiction books, a couple of films and documentaries, and at least one lengthy novel. Now the Norwegian writer Victoria Kielland has written My Men, a short, sharp shock of a book, and a distinctly fresh take on the story.
