Deadly Thirst

About the Book

Deadly Thirst is the true story of four-year-old foster child Andy Setzer, who was murdered in Perris California August 2, 1999.

Deadly Thirst follows Andy from conception to burial and reveals, in riveting investigative style, the series of deadly blunders that led Riverside County Child Protection officials to herd him into a one-way slaughter chute of foster care and straight into the hands of death. Andy's story is a frightening journey into the grim, dark side of foster care.

The author paints a gripping psychological portrait of Andy's killer, Theresa Barroso and her morass of lies as she strives to place the blame solely upon her withdrawn and mentally challenged husband. Equally compelling is a behind-the-scenes look into the investigation that revealed Barroso's habitual need to vent her anger on a defenseless child. The sensational courtroom drama is undeniably graphic, an absolute page-turner, resulting in a verdict that will shock even the most ardent readers of chilling true-crime. Includes thirteen pages of evidentiary documents and crime scene photos.

About the Author

Author Donna Goodenough was born in Covington Kentucky; raised in Southern California and spent the last twenty-two years of her United States residency in Riverside County.

Although her age of 49 puts her somewhere in between childhood and retirement, she feels perfectly at ease writing at both ends of the spectrum-and everywhere else in between.

Donna began her writing career as a freelance writer for a wide variety of magazines and newspapers; within a year she had her own travel column.

Her journalistic versatility has resulted in feature-length articles in almost every type of publication imaginable, including children, religion, gardening, disabilities, adult fiction, animals, health and fitness and senior magazines. One example, Owl for Children prominently featured one of her articles to coincide with the Discovery Channel's "Wooly Mammoth: Discovery in Siberia" which aired in May of 1999. Later that same year, Owl devoted their cover, plus six pages and the centerfold of their October issue to Donna's up-close encounters with the Mountain Gorillas of Uganda. Her love of independent adventure travel has taken Donna to six continents, including Antarctica. In 1999 she spent three months traveling solo through nine African countries, which resulted in a highly acclaimed article on female circumcision. That much debated article landed her on radio talk shows coast to coast in the United States.

There's no doubt that Donna's a thrill seeker/adrenaline junkie. She's skydived and bungee jumped in California, swam with piranhas in the Amazon, kayaked among killer whales in Canada, been chased by elephant seals in Antarctica, drank blood in Kenya, crawled through bat infested tombs in Egypt, camped (in a tent) along alligator infested rivers in the Peruvian rain forest, mud-wrestled in Hollywood, had her hiking boots stolen by a screaming, fang-baring troop of baboons in Tanzania, was dragged off a bus and threatened by machine-gun-toting-machete-wielding rebels at the Rwanda/Congo border, narrowly escaped being blown to smithereens by a suicide bomber in Jerusalem and nearly got her throat slit in Madagascar! All for the sake of adventure!

When Donna isn't writing (or traveling) she maintains a busy speaking circuit conducting seminars and writing workshops at colleges, school districts and city-sponsored facilities. In 2002 she was a conference speaker at the Southern California Writer's Conference in San Diego.

For more information, please visit Donna Goodenough's web site: www.DonnaGoodenough.com