Over a five-year period, Martha Johnson murders her four children, one
by one, in order to punish her husband when they argue, but Martha is no
ordinary serial killer. She murders her children by using the bulk of
her 250-pound body to suffocate them. Unlike other fictionalized
true-crime novels, Underneath neither valorizes nor focuses on the
specific acts of violence. Instead, it attempts to understand how
feelings of powerlessness, the residue of trauma, and the need to find
justice in a world that refuses to give a fat body justice finds its
only respite through murder.