About this item

From the New York Times bestselling author of The Good House, the story of two friends, raised in the same orphanage, whose loyalty is put to the ultimate test when they meet years later at a controversial institution - one as an employee; the other, an inmate.It's 1927 and eighteen-year-old Mary Engle is hired to work as a secretary at a remote but scenic institution for mentally disabled women called the Nettleton State Village for Feebleminded Women of Childbearing Age. She's immediately in awe of her employer - brilliant, genteel Dr. Agnes Vogel. Dr. Vogel had been the only woman in her class in medical school. As a young psychiatrist she was an outspoken crusader for women's suffrage. Now, at age forty, Dr. Vogel runs one of the largest and most self-sufficient public asylums for women in the country.



About the Author

Ann Leary

Ann Leary is the author of the memoir An Innocent, A Broad and the novel Outtakes from a Marriage. She has written fiction and nonfiction for various magazines and literary publications and is a cohost of the NPR weekly radio show Hash Hags. Ann competes in equestrian sports and is a volunteer EMT. She and her family share their small farm in Connecticut with four dogs, three horses, and an angry cat named Sneakers.



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