The Gray Chamber by Grace Hitchcock is another book
in her True Color series which features historical stories of American Crime.
These stories are strange but true events. In this story, Edyth Foster is a
young woman who is a few months from her 25th birthday and receiving
her total inheritance. She has been in the guardianship of her Uncle Boris
since her parents were killed in a tragic accident many years prior. Edyth is
seen as odd as she likes to ride her velocipede (an early form of a bicycle)
and participate in the local fencing club with her oldest friend Raoul “Bane”
Banebridge. She isn’t interested in the latest fashions or even following the
rules of high society of 1887 New York. Just as Bane and Edyth’s relationship
begins to blossom into more than just friendship. Edyth finds herself being
examined for mental health issues. Thinking her uncle would never have her
committed, she finds herself locked away in New York’s infamous Blackwell’s
Island in the Woman’s Lunatic Asylum where no one believes that she has been
wrongly committed or even what her real name is. There she meets another
patient, Nellie Brown, who seems as sound mind as Edyth does. Will Edyth ever
escape this nightmare? Will Bane find a way to set her free and help Edyth
expose the truth?
The Gray Chamber is another awesome book in this
series. I read The White City (2019) last year and loved Ms. Hitchcock
blend of fiction with the historical events. From the opening page, the reader
is introduced to a time when mental illness wasn’t understood and women were
routinely falsely diagnosed as mental ill in order to get rid of them for various
reasons. Some women were wives that husbands found a way to divorce them
without scandal or even immigrants who couldn’t speak the language. The drama
is intense and exciting. The treatment of the patients is horrifying and
heartbreaking. The asylum was officially closed in 1894 after an expose was
published and led to a grand jury investigation. There are characters, you know,
are up to no good right off the bat and there are characters that surprise you
as their motives are revealed. I look forward to reading other titles in the
True Color series and I highly recommend The Gray Chamber!
The Gray Chamber
is available in
paperback, eBook and audiobook
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