Dark Tide: Growing Up with Ted Bundy is a thoughtful act of catharsis

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"Does the world need another book about Ted Bundy?" you might be wondering, and even the author of Dark Tide: Growing Up with Ted Bundy agrees. The serial killer has been so memorably portrayed by heartthrobs including Mark Harmon and Zac Efron that we all agree, as a nation, that Bundy was slick, charming and hot. In this slim memoir, author Edna Cowell Martin rejects that established trope, and she should know: Bundy was her cousin, an association that has cast a shadow over her entire adult life.

Unlike many in his orbit, Martin has never dined out on her relationship with the infamous mass murderer. One of two kids raised in a progressive, interesting family (her dad, John R. Cowell, was a concert musician, her mom is portrayed as an affectionate and supportive parent), Martin describes her younger years in a series of vignettes that deftly illustrate the gap in experience that might have existed between her upbringing and Bundy's. While Edna was playing with royalty as her pop toured Europe, Bundy was being raised by Louise, a struggling single mother who moved in with the Cowells in an effort at a fresh start. (John Cowell was Louise's uncle, but the two were separated by just a few years, likely why Edna consistently refers to Ted Bundy as her cousin.)