A fictional account, based on true events, of two mentally ill women in different historical eras and their struggle within psychiatric institutions.

Rigmor Blumenthal started to suffer fits of mania around 1926, when she was 15 years old, and also became prone to bouts of implacable depression, but doctors simply classified her as an “hysteric,” as was common at the time. She’s now 23 years old and living in Germany; her condition has only worsened, and her sister, Inga, who’s very protective of her, tries desperately to help, recruiting psychiatrist Arnold Richter to become her sibling’s “compassionate friend.” When Rigmor’s condition doesn’t improve, Inga sends her to an institution for treatment. Inga even ensures, by way of making a generous donation to the institute, that Arnold is given a position there to vigilantly protect her. However, the Nazis in power at the time are willing to go to “gruesome lengths” to “eradicate disease and decrease expenditure”—a policy that places Rigmor in mortal danger, especially because she is also Jewish. Over the course of the novel, the author deftly weaves together two moving stories—Inga’s attempt to rescue Rigmor from the sanatorium and flee to Switzerland, and later, in the 1980s, Inga’s work to help her granddaughter, Sabine, who finds herself in a predicament similar to Rigmor’s, as she’s mentally ill and confined involuntarily to a psychiatric institution in Massachusetts.

True notes that the “bones of the story are true,” and her novel has a poignant feeling of verisimilitude. Her depiction of Nazi Germany’s treatment of the infirm is vividly harrowing; children are the subjects of experiments and starved, patients are forcibly sterilized, and people deemed incurable are sent to the gas chambers. Anyone who voices an opposition to these policies risks their lives to do so. Moreover, the author paints a remarkably sensitive picture of Inga’s complex psyche—on the one hand, she’s a formidable person, full of self-possession, and on the other, she’s terrified to discuss her past. When Sabine presses her to do so, Inga does her best to evade her inquiries but falters. “That she allowed the conversation to get so out of hand was either a sign of her old age or an indication of a strength that Inga had not previously seen in Sabine….Perhaps it was a slow and painful excavation of a past that was getting more difficult to keep buried.” The plot is exceedingly complex and can slow to a crawl at times, but readers’ patience will be well rewarded, as True manages to convey a heartbreaking story without adding any sense of false sentimentality to the narrative. She wisely lets the reader encounter the drama without sensationalizing it, as it’s a tale that hardly needs rhetorical embellishment. Her prose style is simple and matter-of-fact, and it’s a manner of writing that’s suitable to the subject matter. Overall, this is a wrenching story that’s both historically scrupulous and artistically nimble—an impressive and rare combination.

A dramatically captivating and historically edifying novel.