Her new book “Moral Treatment” is influenced by its history.
It is historical fiction that explores the complexities of mental healthcare in the late 1800s, through the lens of an aging male superintendent and a young woman patient committed by her parents.
Interview highlights
On her impressions of the hospital as a local: "It was always a place of fascination for me. I grew up in town. Probably around junior high age I would go roaming around with friends on the grounds, hiking on the trails behind it and through the arboretum in front of it. There was, for a while, a short-lived museum in one of the cottages run by the former groundskeeper Earl Steele. And he was very gracious and very welcoming to unaccompanied minors who happened in and were interested in looking the artifacts in that small museum. So I remember him quite fondly. And you know, it was also a space that I'd heard about through family lore."
On how research and history informed the story: "I was interested in the early history of the place, what had led to the erection of such an enormous Hospital in our area in 1885. The hospital in my novel is not precisely the Northern Michigan asylum. It's a fictionalized space. It is very similar to that hospital. The title, 'Moral Treatment' was the standard of care practice back then."
On what she hopes the audience takes away: "I hope they appreciate, or they take away an appreciation of the complexity of this moment in the past. I do think it was a very complicated moment where people with real progressive impulses were in a predicament of not having the tools and the knowledge available to them to really help the people that they're trying to help."
