What She Left Behind

During the writing of What She Left Behind, I relied on the following books: The Lives They Left Behind: Suitcases from a State Hospital Attic, by Darby Penney and Peter Stastny; Ten Days in a Mad-House, by Nellie Bly; and Women of the Asylum: Voices from Behind the Walls 1840–1945, by Jeffery L. Geller and Maxine Harris.

Although the above books helped a great deal in imagining what conditions must have been like inside insane asylums, my novel is not a historical work and has no intention of being one. It is my interpretation of what it might have been like to be committed against one’s will. The characters in this novel are entirely fictitious. But several of the places described, including the Long Island Home and Willard State, are real. Chapin Hall, and its attached wards and outbuildings, existed. At Willard there were also detached patient wards: the Pines, the Maples, Sunnycroft, and the Edgemere, each with its own dining room, kitchen, supervisor’s office, apartments, and boiler house. It is also important to note that for purpose of plot, patient treatments and therapies were portrayed as being in use either earlier or later than was actually the case. The Utica Crib, a locked wooden cage, was put out of use in 1887. Insulin shock therapy was put into use in 1935. Electroshock therapy was put into use in 1938. And, finally, psychologists were not used in most state asylums until 1960.