For the Love of My Son

by Margaret Davis, Jane Ross-MacDonald

The story of an ordinary woman whose grief—and love—for her only son compelled her to do something extraordinary. When Margaret Davis's beloved son Steven was murdered by his own wife, a Philippino former prostitute, she travelled across continents to track down her son’s killers and bring them to justice, and to rescue her grandchildren. Based on Margaret's own diaries, notes, and emails, this tells not only the awful but utterly compelling story of her perilous journey, but also of how she has dealt with her crippling grief, and how she has striven to save and protect two small children caught up in the violent crossfire of their parents’ failing marriage. It is a tale of two cultures that clashed, with terrible results. And it is a tale of how one mother, faced with her worst nightmare, has fought for justice for her son and some kind of healing for herself and the others left behind after his appalling death.

Genres: True Crime, Nonfiction, Crime

272 pages, Paperback

First published October 1, 2006

Reviews

[Mariyah]

Captivating reading. I could not put the book down. Unfortunately the story is not a fiction. It happened in real life. The sad conclusion is that in Philippines, justice is only available to those with money and who are prepared to pay for things to get done. It`s incredible that the victim`s mother had to pay the petrol for the Philippine police in order for them to go and interview people. A mother`s love fought with the corrupt system and won.
I am very happy that she took the children with her. Eveylin took her son but she took Eveylin`s kids.

[Lori]

3.4 ⭐️ A very moving story about a mother’s search for justice after her son’s murder. I can’t imagine what Steven’s family went through!
I always feel very lucky to be Canadian. I am not naive enough to believe the Canadian justice system doesn’t have corruption and flaws; no system is perfect. But to have to pay the police off to do their own job? To buy them gas so they could go interview a witness? To pay off every body who knew Evelyn, so they would tell the ‘truth”? Incredible!
Not having children of my own, I may not have grasped the extent of Margaret’s pain and need for justice. But I think the book kind of lost me when she left her fragile, traumatized grandchildren at home to go look Evelyn in the face as she was sentenced in the Philippines. There was a small chance she wouldn’t have come back, and if that happened, the grandchildren would have been retraumatized and uprooted. I think Steven would have preferred her to care for his children. Perhaps it was for that tiny little hope that Evelyn was innocent?
I do think that Margaret was quite gracious in her portrayal of Evelyn. You can tell that she wrote this book knowing her grandchildren would someday read it. That might be why I didn’t feel as emotionally attached to the story? A lot of that raw anger and hate was sugar coated. And, for the grandchildren’s sake, I am glad for that.
Like her husband, I too am proud of her that she brought this injustice to light. And that she has hopefully made the path a little easier for other victims.
A couple of the drawbacks for me were that this was Margaret’s story, but I would have liked more information on how his siblings and extended family were dealing with the situation. Also the grammar police in my is hard to stifle and I wished the editors had done a better job of catching spelling mistakes and poor sentence structure.
I would recommend this to anyone that likes this genre.

[Ashimadayal]

Great read

Beautifully written account - very real and tough- of a woman's loss of her son. She has literally bared her soul in this book. Worth it! Truly inspiring is her drive and perseverance for justice!

[Katt]

Excellent Book



This was a very touching true story of a wonderful mother not giving up to get justice for her beloved son. I highly recommend this book!

[Sujatha Gopi]

very touching.