by Lee Smith
It's ok. I was interested in how many of the girls in the hospital appeared to be there because they were either promiscuous or didn't seem to fit into the usual wifely mould in other ways. But I never really felt an emotional connection to the characters. I found it quite readable nonetheless, even...
On the night of March 9, 1948, fire consumed the Central Building at the Highland Mental Hospital in Asheville, North Carolina. Although people at the time recognized that the fire had been set, the local police department never identified the arsonist. Among the nine women who died on a locked floo...
Guests on Earth starts strong but flounders toward the middle, thumping slowly toward an unsatisfying ending (all of Lee Smith's books have crappy endings). It reads like a big gumbo of things the author finds interesting: mental health and the treatment of "wild women" in the mid-1900s, southern be...
Evalina comes to the renowned Highland hospital for acute sadness. Her mother had died and she found herself in untenable circumstances, which will eventually lead her to this cutting edge hospital for mental disorders under the innovative Dr. Carroll. There she will find a home and friends that wil...
Following her mother's death, thirteen-year-old Evalina Toussaint is sent to Highland Hospital in North Carolina, the same mental institution where Zelda Fitzgerald and eight other women died in an intentionally set fire in 1948. With an inventive blend of history and fiction, Lee Smith follows Eval...
Guests on Earth by Lee Smith tells the story of Evalina, the child of a New Orleans exotic dancer. In 1936, left fatherless and orphaned, her mother’s married ex-boyfriend assumes her care. While in his home, the first sign of mental illness presents itself, and she is sent to Highland Hospital in ...
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