All she has left is her sanity. Will the asylum take that from her too?

In 1939, Matilda is admitted to Ghyllside Hospital, cut off from family and friends. Not quite twenty, and forced to give up her baby for adoption, she feels battered by the cruel regime. Yet she finds a surprising ally in rough-edged Doris, who risks harsh punishments to help her reach out to the brother she left behind.

Twenty-five years later, the rules have relaxed, and the women are free to leave. How will they cope in a world transformed in their absence? Do greater dangers await them outside?

The poignant prequel to Matilda Windsor Is Coming Home is a tragic yet tender story of a woman robbed of her future who summons the strength to survive.

My Review

This was a hard read for me. I won’t go into detail again about my Jewish mother’s constant battle with mental illness, her escape from the Nazis shortly before the war, her lobotomy in the 1950s, her electric shock treatment, as I already mentioned all this in my review of Matilda Windsor Is Coming Home. But I can’t pretend that Stolen Summers didn’t upset me. It did.

We first meet Matilda when she is taken to Ghyllside Hospital, a mental institution, probably referred to as a ‘lunatic asylum’ in those days. It’s where girls were often sent after becoming pregnant ‘out of wedlock’. Their sanity was called into question and their babies taken away to be adopted immediately after they were born. The mothers were considered mentally defective and this ‘mental defect’ was believed by some to have caused the women’s ‘immorality’. They were locked up to prevent the perpetuation of ‘unfit’ genes. Unbelievable to think that nowadays.

Matty doesn’t talk about the pregnancy or the baby. Her main concern is that her little brother is only six and how will they explain to him where she has gone. Eventually she is told that it would be better for Henry if he forgets she even exists. We have to wait until Matilda Windsor Is Coming Home to find out more about Henry.

For now it is just about Matilda and the friendship she forms with the course Doris who ends up being her best and only true friend. She also befriends a black, American soldier called Eustace, who she meets at the weekly dances. Until then she had no idea that there were men at Ghyllside Hospital as they are segregated the rest of the time. We suspect this brief ‘relationship’ will not go well.

Stolen Summers is very short. I read it in a couple of hours max. It basically serves as an introduction to the twenty-year-old Matilda, and shows us how she ended up in Ghyllside Hospital, following her pregnancy. We also jump back and forth between 1939 when she enters the hospital, and 1964 when she has more freedom to come and go, and then finally we see Matilda in 1989 right at the start of Matilda Windsor Is Coming Home.

It’s a wonderful book – please don’t be put off by my own personal experience. It gives a real insight into the way unmarried mothers were treated in what is actually less than 100 years ago. A lot less in fact.

Many thanks to the author for an advance copy in exchange for a review.

About the Author

Anne Goodwin’s drive to understand what makes people tick led to a career in clinical psychology. That same curiosity now powers her fiction.

Anne writes about the darkness that haunts her and is wary of artificial light. She makes stuff up to tell the truth about adversity, creating characters to care about and stories to make you think. She explores identity, mental health and social justice with compassion, humour and hope.

An award-winning short-story writer, she has published three novels and a short story collection with small independent press, Inspired Quill. Her debut novel Sugar and Snails, was shortlisted for the 2016 Polari First Book Prize.

Away from her desk, Anne guides book-loving walkers through the Derbyshire landscape that inspired Charlotte Brontë’s Jane Eyre.

Subscribers to her newsletter can download a free e-book of award-winning short stories.

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Amazon and other purchase links
US: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0BFJH1VL8
UK: https://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/B0BFJH1VL8
CAN: https://www.amazon.ca/dp/B0BFJH1VL8
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Universal link: https://books2read.com/u/mvXq6q

Direct review links @ https://linktr.ee/stolensummers