The women of Magdalene are dying and no one seems to care, least of all the haughty Dr. Kingston, the director of the genteel Ladies’ Lunatic Asylum.
Set in the shattered post–Civil War south, Women of Magdalene is a beautiful tale of deception, betrayal, greed and self-sacrifice.
Young Dr. Robert Mallory, fresh from three blood-soaked years as a field surgeon on the battlefields of the Civil War, makes his way on foot to the Magdalene Ladies’ Lunatic Asylum to take up duties as the resident “general practitioner.” In a river near the asylum, he finds the body of a woman. A young man nearby tells him that “she be one of them mad women,” and Mallory carries the body to the asylum’s front doors. He is confused and disappointed by the indifference with which his discovery is met by the authorities.
Over the following months, Mallory learns that the misogynistic, racist Dr. Kingston and his cranky old assistant Dr. Hardy have little interest in “curing” their patients. And Mallory discovers many of them aren't patients at all. They are women who are conveniently "disposed of" by families.
When another patient is found dead on the bank of the river in the night, Kingston hastily blames a young “Negress” employed by the asylum and shoots her lover and her on the spot. The girl is locked up and, accused of killing a white woman, she is taken from her cell and lynched. Mallory is determined to expose Kingston and exonerate the girl, but Kingston has other plans.
Lushly evocative, written with elegance and beauty, Women of Magdalene is a richly satisfying story. Through the eyes of its protagonist, Dr. Mallory, we are given a vivid look into that long-vanished world of slavery and southern gentility, and the racism that made it possible.
Excerpt
"Attending to the ills of madwomen would make a change from my duties during what my genteel mother referred to as the 'late unpleasantness.' Indeed, it had been unpleasant, amputating the limbs of the wounded, dismantling whole cartloads of men. I wore a special pair of boots with rows of horseshoe nails embedded in the soles for cleats to keep me from slipping and falling as I hurried through my work in the surgery tent, the floor awash with blood."
Professional Reviews
Booklist
Issue: September 15, 2007
Women of Magdalene.
Poole-Carter, Rosemary (Author)
Sep 2007. 288 p. Kunati, hardcover, $24.95. (1601640145).
Dr. Robert Mallory cut his teeth as a medic during the Civil War. After the war, he agrees to serve as a general practitioner at Louisiana’s Magdalene Ladies’ Asylum, run by a Dr. Kingston, a former of colleague of Mallory’s father. On his way there, Mallory discovers a woman’s body washed up in a river. The victim turns out to have been a patient at Magdalene’s, a fact that draws only a calloused reaction from Dr. Kingston. Soon Mallory realizes that his new boss is an indifferent, cruel man and that the asylum is a truly horrific place. As still more dead bodies emerge, it becomes apparent that there is something more sinister going on at Magdalene’s than simple mistreatment of the unfortunate—and that the institution may even hold the answer to the mysterious death of his own sister. Poole-Carter has captured the post–Civil War South with candor and grace, and though Mallory’s saintliness seems a bit contrived early on, a surprising plot twist proves him to be utterly human indeed. A fine mix of thriller, historical fiction, and Southern Gothic.
— Mary Frances Wilkens
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