Winner of 8 national awards
A romance.
A forced marriage.
A scandalous affair.
A hit man.
A true story.
“I tried to open my eyes, hoping to stir up enough courage to face the frightening commotion just outside our window. It was no use. My imagination ran wild as I conjured up all kinds of horrors unfolding out in the darkness.” These are the words of a young boy living in a small Greek mountain village in the 1950s trying to understand the booming noises out in the night that turned out to be gunshots. It’s a defining moment from Better Dead than Divorced. The boy is Lukas Konandreas, the author of this true story about the forced marriage and murder of Panayota, his father’s cousin.
Even after becoming a doctor and then immigrating to the US, Konandreas remained haunted by what happened in his village so long ago. “It has taken me years to piece together this story,” says Konandreas. “I didn’t want filial love to blind me to the truth, but my family reacted strongly to my research. ‘It’s a story that must be told,’ some said, ‘for Panayota if for no other reason.’ Others were less supportive. ‘Leave the dead alone,’ they said. ‘Let them lie peacefully in the cemetery of St. Anthony.’”
But needing to know what happened, Konandreas went on to conduct more than 160 interviews along with painstaking research of historic court records and old newspaper accounts to discover all the details.
Hollywood could not invent a better antagonist than George Nitsos. Outwardly, he had it all—good looks, money, charisma, power, and influence—while Panayota was a young village beauty. When it was discovered that George had taken Panayota’s virginity, her family, led by the author’s father, forces George to marry the girl. Yet the other village girls still could not resist George’s boyish charms. And he certainly wasn’t going to let marriage stand in the way of his indiscretions. Friends encouraged Panayota to leave George, but she felt this would bring shame to her. “Better dead than divorced,” she’s quoted as saying. And dead is how she ends up, killed by a hired hit man. But the story doesn’t end there as the author’s father driven by honor and conscience fights beyond his modest means to seek justice in a corrupt system.
Romance. Marriage. Scandal. Murder. The pursuit of justice. Sometimes, the truth is stranger and more compelling than fiction.
(Group read suggestion from Beth McCrea, book club co-founder.)
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