Title: Blue Asylum Author: Kathy Hepinstall
Published: April 10, 2012
Genre(s): Historical Fiction
Page Count: 288
Rating:
Summary from Goodreads:mid the mayhem of the Civil War, Virginia plantation wife Iris Dunleavy is put on trial and convicted of madness. It is the only reasonable explanation the court can see for her willful behavior, so she is sent away to Sanibel Asylum to be restored to a good, compliant woman. Iris knows, though, that her husband is the true criminal; she is no lunatic, only guilty of disagreeing with him on notions of justice, cruelty, and property. On this remote Florida island, cut off by swamps and seas and military blockades, Iris meets a wonderful collection of residents--some seemingly sane, some wrongly convinced they are crazy, some charmingly odd, some dangerously unstable. Which of these is Ambrose Weller, the war-haunted Confederate soldier whose memories terrorize him into wild fits that can only be calmed by the color blue, but whose gentleness and dark eyes beckon to Iris. The institution calls itself modern, but Iris is skeptical of its methods, particularly the dreaded "water treatment." She must escape, but she has found new hope and love with Ambrose. Can she take him with her? If they make it out, will the war have left anything for them to make a life from, back home? Blue Asylum is a vibrant, beautifully-imagined, absorbing story of the lines we all cross between sanity and madness. It is also the tale of a spirited woman, a wounded soldier, their impossible love, and the undeniable call of freedom.
There is probably only one topic in the entire world that scares the crap out of me, and that’s an insane asylum. It’s horrifying an a fascinating way, of course, so I started Blue Asylum cautiously curious, and altogether found Kathy Hepinstall’s novel to be a deliciously rewarding adventure.
Though it takes place during the American Civil War, this book’s remote location on Florida’s Sannibel Island gives it a more exotic sort of atmosphere (and having been to Sannibel, it was one I identified with). I definitely think that more could have been done with the setting, but as this is mostly a story about mental growth and processes, I think that it was okay that Blue Asylum didn’t devote as much time to its historical place and period as some other books might have.
However, one thing I would have liked to see more of was specifics concerning the treatments patients underwent at the asylum. Obviously, there’s the “water treatment” mentioned in the jacket copy, which is basically medically-sanctioned Chinese water torture. But beyond that, Hepinstall didn’t seem to go into specifics. Obviously the patients met with a psychiatrist weekly, but other than that, the book didn’t touch very much on how these “lunatics” were being helped. That is certainly one area I think the author could have improved on.
Beyond those things, Blue Asylum is mostly a story about a set of three protagonists (maybe four), and how they interact and learn from one another. There’s Iris, a plantation wife; Ambrose; a soldier suffering from what we’d now call PTSD; and John, the head of the asylum. John’s son, Wendell, also plays a role in the novel, as do various other patients and residents of the island.
As I said, this book is focused very much on each characters’ mind and motivation, and I think that’s an area where Hepinstall really shone. Iris and the doctor in particular both had very nice character arcs and showed a lot of growth over the course of the book (the doctor moreso than Iris, of course).
Though not satisfying on all counts, I still enjoyed Blue Asylum and found it to be a well-written piece of historical fiction. Kathy Hepinstall’s storytelling is engaging and comes with a nice payoff in the end, and is character-focused in a way that I’m a big fan of.
