Product Description
When she is thirteen years old, Evalina Toussaint, the orphaned child of an exotic dancer in New Orleans, is admitted as a mental patient to Highland Hospital in Asheville, North Carolina. The year is 1936, and the hospital, under the direction of celebrity psychiatrist Robert S. Carroll, is famous for its up-to-the-minute shock therapies and for Dr. Carroll’s revolutionary theory of the benefits of nonintrospection.
Evalina finds herself in the midst of a kaleidoscope of characters, including the estranged wife of F. Scott Fitzgerald. Her role as accompanist for all theatricals and programs at the hospital gives her privileged insight into the events that transpire over the twelve years leading up to a tragic 1948 fire—its mystery unsolved to this day—that killed nine women in a locked ward on the top floor, including Zelda.
In Evalina Toussaint, Lee Smith has a created a narrator whose story is one of unstoppable and defiant introspection. At the risk of Dr. Carroll’s ire and at all costs, Evalina listens, observes, delves, pursues, accompanies, remembers—and tells us everything. This is her wildly prescient story about a time and a place where creativity and passion, theory and medicine, fact and fiction are luminously intertwined.
Evalina finds herself in the midst of a kaleidoscope of characters, including the estranged wife of F. Scott Fitzgerald. Her role as accompanist for all theatricals and programs at the hospital gives her privileged insight into the events that transpire over the twelve years leading up to a tragic 1948 fire—its mystery unsolved to this day—that killed nine women in a locked ward on the top floor, including Zelda.
In Evalina Toussaint, Lee Smith has a created a narrator whose story is one of unstoppable and defiant introspection. At the risk of Dr. Carroll’s ire and at all costs, Evalina listens, observes, delves, pursues, accompanies, remembers—and tells us everything. This is her wildly prescient story about a time and a place where creativity and passion, theory and medicine, fact and fiction are luminously intertwined.
Reviews/Praise
—Sound Commentary
“Well-researched historical detail blends with fiction to create memorable characters in a unique setting during an interesting era. Emily Woo Zeller’s lively narration keeps the listener engaged.”
—Library Journal
“Zeller manages to make each [character] distinct and memorable. . . . [Her] confiding tone will draw listeners in to the unfolding story.”
—Booklist
“Evalina’s story is intriguing, and Zeller’s lively narration keeps the novel engaging.”
—AudioFile
“This is a carefully researched, utterly charming novel. By the time you finish it, you will fall in love with these fascinating lives, too.”
—The Washington Post
“Delivers on all counts, entrancing readers with a brilliant tapestry that falls inside the confines of historical fiction, yet defies genre with a hypnotic narrative.”
—BookPage
“Smith’s well-developed characters, rich historical detail and easy prose create a novel that some may call her best yet, and which it just may be.”
—Minneapolis Star Tribune
“Truly engaging.”
—Publishers Weekly
“Smith has created a compelling, disturbing but also uplifting narrative inspired by the 1948 fire that swept through Highland Hospital in Asheville, killing nine women, among them Zelda Fitzgerald.”
—The Herald Sun
“Treading the fine line between sanity and insanity, this historical novel imagines the 12 years proceeding the 1948 fire that engulfed a North Carolina mental hospital and killed F. Scott Fitzgerald’s estranged wife, Zelda.”
—Ms. Magazine
“With this book, Smith will broaden her readership to draw in those fascinated by the Fitzgerald ethos while entertaining her perennial fans with the local lore and down home accents behind the scenes.”
—Foreword Reviews
“This is Lee Smith at her powerful best, writing the South she knows through the eyes of a woman who lived it.”
—Adriana Trigiani, author of Big Stone Gap and The Shoemaker’s Wife
Author Bio
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