.png)
HOSPITAL HILL
KATHERINE ANDERSON
Paperback | Kindle
July 2016 (3rd Edition) | 228 Pages | 6 x 0.6 x 9 inches
After working in asylums for nearly three decades, Valerie Martin is set to retire but one phone call changes everything and she finds herself on a train bound for Northampton and the asylum where her career began on the wards in 1959. Finding herself inside the walls for the first time in over a decade, Valerie begins one final clerical task for the Department of Mental Health, a job that forces her to relive her years at the asylum. As she digs through the files, uncovering memories long forgotten, Valerie discovers something else, a dark and dangerous secret that has remained buried in the basement records room for years. As she investigates further, Valerie must take a deeper look at her time at Northampton State Hospital, as well as the people who surrounded her, uncovering a mystery that threatens to change her forever.
About the Author
Katherine Anderson is the award-winning author of two historic mysteries, Hospital Hill and Shadows in the Ward. She was born in 1980 in Western Massachusetts and is a special education teacher. For many years Kate has worked to painstakingly research and document the insane asylums and state schools in New England, publishing nonfiction works and lecturing on the history of mental illness.
Reviews
Winner of Best of New England Regional Literary Award
Katherine Anderson's historical mystery novel, Hospital Hill, is a fascinating and suspense-filled tale set in one of the country's largest mental institutions, known in earlier times as an insane asylum. Seeing the asylum and its inhabitants through the eyes of Valerie Martin is an illuminating and profound experience as she's blessed with the ability to see past the sackcloth dresses and instability to the humanity of those women she comes to care about. As she's compiling the patient records thirty years later, she begins to piece together dark secrets that she had repressed and to see patterns that are horrifying and infinitely sad. Anderson's characters shine out in this suspenseful and well-written historical novel. She guides the reader through the labyrinthine passageways of the old state hospital and gives them insights into the history those buildings contain (over 64,000 patients would be admitted from its opening in 1858 until it closed in 1993). Her plot is well-constructed and original, and her writing is a joy to read. Hospital Hill is most highly recommended.
-- Readers Favorite