1900 girls who live with their psychiatrist father at an asylum. Very adult material it seemed to me. ( )

I liked this book so much...until the end. This is the story of two sisters, their father (a widower) and their dead mother's sister who move to an insane asylum in New York. It's the story of dealing with a parent's death, and people trying to slowly reform asylums. However, the ending seemed like such a let down. I don't know if Whelan was hoping to write a sequel, or whether it was supposed to be so open-ended. I didn't enjoy it. ( )

This book had the potential to address an interesting topic – the treatment of mental illnesses in the early 1900s. I think the main reason the book failed to succeed was because the characters were not very compelling, and the plot was rather rote and formulaic. Many of the plot points were unrealistic; while this is often the case it can usually be overlooked if the reader is invested in the characters and the story is well executed. Often the author’s overt descriptions of a character contradicted the way the character actually acted. The book is fine for introducing the subject or providing some light reading, but does not really qualify as a must-read.

Verna is a young lady whose small family consisting of herself, her father, younger sister Carlie, and Aunt Maude, has just moved to a remote mental hospital in Michigan in 1900. Her father has taken a position as a psychiatrist at the hospital. Once they are settled in one of the more promising patients is assigned as the family's maid. Eleanor is recovering from melancholia and quickly finds a warm welcome the children and their father. Aunt Maude however believes that Eleanor is dangerous and an unhealthy influence on the girls. Verna must grow up quickly to protect her sister and her new friend from the pitfalls of jealousy, fear, and depression that undermine the green lawns and fragrant gardens of the asylum. If she is lucky the hospital will become a home and the strange group of people she has met there will be able to grow into a family. Unlike many period novels set in asylums this book does not vilify the hospital or the doctors. The director believes that external beauty will call forth beauty from the soul and help patients recover. This creates an interesting atmosphere as it is the respectable, nominally sane aunt creating the dramatic tension rather than a fight between patient and doctor or between the compassion of the reader and the brutal treatments administered to the residents. ( )

After their mother dies of typhoid, Verna and her younger sister Carlie move with their father, a psychiatrist, and stern Aunt Maude to an asylum for the mentally ill in early-twentieth-century Michigan, where new ideas in the treatment of mental illness are being proposed, but old prejudices still hold sway. ( )