Blue Asylum
A Novel
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- ¥1,600
発行者による作品情報
A woman falls in love with a wounded Civil War solider in this "fine novel embroidered with rich imagery"about the line between sanity and madness (Kirkus Reviews).
When Virginia plantation wife Iris Dunleavy is put on trial and convicted of madness, she knows the real criminal is her husband. After all, the only thing she's guilty of is disagreeing with him on notions of justice, cruelty, and property.
Sent away to a remote Florida island, Iris meets an odd collection of residents in Sanibel Asylum: some seemingly sane, some wrongly convinced they are crazy, some dangerously unstable. And while Iris isn't sure what to make of haunted Confederate soldier Ambrose Weller—whose memories terrorize him into wild fits that can only be calmed by the color blue—she does know that his gentleness and dark eyes call to her like nothing she's ever known before . . .
"Deftly interweaving past and present, Hepinstall sets the struggles of her characters against the rigidity of a traditional Southern society and the brutality of war in an absorbing story that explores both the rewards and perils of love, pride, and sanity itself." —Publishers Weekly
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Hepinstall (The Absence of Nectar) exquisitely illustrates the fate of societal outsiders in this richly compelling Civil War era tale of the former mistress of a Virginia plantation, now confined to a beautiful island asylum, and her burgeoning love for a traumatized Confederate soldier. Deemed insane by a judge after defying her husband, Iris Dunleavy insists to the well-meaning but arrogant doctor of Sanibel Asylum, Dr. Henry Cowell, that she is sane. Meanwhile, veteran Ambrose Weller fights to maintain control of his war-torn emotions. As the horrors of Iris and Ambrose's pasts are slowly revealed, both Dr. Cowell and his alienated young son, Wendell, are irresistibly drawn to Iris, even as she plans her escape and wrestles with her love of Ambrose. Deftly interweaving past and present, Hepinstall sets the struggles of her characters against the rigidity of a traditional Southern society and the brutality of war in an absorbing story that explores both the rewards and perils of love, pride, and sanity itself.
