The Locked Garden

It’s 1900, and Verna, Carlie, and their psychiatrist father move to northern Michigan when Papa accepts a job at the state hospital.  Though Verna and Carlie, who live with their father in a cottage on the grounds of the institution, find the place surprisingly beautiful and welcoming, they still miss their mother, whose recent death was one reason for their move.  Papa mostly buries himself in work, finding that his new and humane theories about the treatment of mental illness meet some resistance from his colleagues.

 

How will the family overcome their grief and move forward? 

 

The setting for this story was based on Traverse City State Hospital, which at the turn of the twentieth century was at the forefront of modern methods of psychiatric care, thanks largely to the efforts superintendent James Decker Munson.