An Age of Madness
A Novel
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5.0 • 1 Rating
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- $11.99
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- $11.99
Publisher Description
A Boston psychiatrist must confront her own inner demons in a novel that “peels away the layers of what can be known and what can be admitted” (Stuart Archer Cohen, author of The Army of the Republic).
Dr. Regina Moss is a dedicated healer with a reputation that inspires colleagues and patients alike. Yet Regina is haunted by her past. Her daughter barely speaks to her. And she can’t stop thinking about the lanky new tech on the ward.
Grief and trauma simmer just beneath Regina’s brash attitude and biting wit. But as her armor begins to crack, the reader is drawn deep into her troubled psyche. Full of startling revelations and heartrending twists, An Age of Madness is “a confidently rendered portrait of one woman’s journey to recover from loss” (Foreword Reviews).
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Psychiatrist Regina Moss comes on strong in this compassionate, imperfect novel of the surprising, halting ways that the heart and mind heal after tragedy. Regina works at a "holding tank for public-sector mentally ill" in a Massachusetts hospital where the afflicted patients' suffering and symptoms mirror her own troubles, despite her strenuous efforts to keep the effects of personal tragedy at bay through mordant wit and a clinical remove. Regina's relationship with her college-age daughter is frayed, and the defenses she's built up allow her to function, if not flourish, years after a terrible personal loss. Two things finally crack Regina open to further waves of grief: her role as dutiful daughter to an ailing father reaches a critical point, and a tenuous, affair with a younger subordinate. In the deftly sketched Regina, Maine has created a touchingly human reminder that scar tissue isn't always visible, but unwittingly shows how an uneven story can fail to measure up to a well-drawn character.
