An adventure tale featuring medicine, madness, and art in Meek’s historical novel set in 19th-century France.

Young Sabrine Weiss is talented, beautiful, innocent, and deeply disturbed. She’s also subject to what seem to be epileptic fits. When the novel opens, her fiercely protective older sister, Julie, has liberated her from the Salpêtrière, the most famous teaching asylum in Europe, hoping that the wider and more stimulating world of the Paris art scene will prove therapeutic. Julie is an editor and translator with ties to the vibrant Impressionist community, and all the expected scenesters are here: Cezanne, Degas, Pissarro, Monet and Manet, Gauguin, and Vincent van Gogh and his fiercely protective brother, Theo. Vincent, of course, is also deeply disturbed, famously slicing off his ear and committing suicide at 37. (Sabrine and Vincent eventually become soul mates.) Julie has many talents, among them hypnosis, by which she can probe a person’s distant past; she also can coax their dreams from them, which is her friend Sigmund Freud’s cue to enter the story. Will Sabrine be cured of her epilepsy, and her traumatic secret unearthed? This epic battle of science versus faith is one of the novel’s recurring themes, while medical advances and discoveries also take center stage. Freud’s alienist theories were just beginning to be warily respected. He had been the mentee of the famous Dr. Charcot, director the Salpêtrière, but they eventually parted ways. Julie sums it up by insisting (rightly) that the cause of her sister’s disturbed mind is not physiological (per Charcot) but psychological (per Freud). Meek notes changes in the three challenging decades that ushered in modern science and modern sensibilities. He’s a competent writer and keeps the plot moving. He revels in detailed scenes like the artists’ wild parties; and, in the denouement, readers get a sympathetic portrait of “Father” Pissarro, getting on in years but still delighting in the service of art. It’s a wonderfully upbeat note to end on.

A sensitive and well-plotted re-creation of perhaps the most scientifically and culturally significant era in French history.