When Real LIfe Meets Research

HANK PHILLIPPI RYAN: Oh, gosh. What a thought-provoking post today from author Lynne Squires. I wonder how many of us have stories like this..but that’s not the question she has for us at the end of this touching essay.

See what happens when one discovery in a her life--developed not only into a novel, but into understanding and compassion.


When Real Life Meets Research

By M. Lynne Squires

After my mother’s passing when I was in my 30s, I found out she had been committed to an asylum for depression when I was just a year or two old. Mental health issues were treated differently then. What would be addressed today with medication and therapy, in the 1950s still subject to more arcane methods, from “fresh air cures” to lobotomies.

I was able to request the records for her stay there. There were meager notes about her time there, but enough to know she received shock treatments before her release.

Now in my 60s, I began a story about a new mother with auditory hallucinations and depression, inspired by my mother’s experience.

When I started writing fiction, it never occurred to me the research that would be involved. I thought research was the denizen of the nonfiction author. That misconception was debased early in my make-believe world creation journey. In the past few years, I have found myself down rabbit holes about the history of safety deposit boxes, how cross-stitch samplers came about, and more recently, the origin of the phrase “above the fold” in reference to newspaper articles.

I often find research for historical fiction is best accomplished in viewing old photographs and postcards. The nuances the eye can observe are often the details a narrative might overlook. A recent deep dive centered around asylums from the 1950s and backwards through the 17th century. Photographs and postcards are plentiful, although I wonder who would be excited to receive a postcard featuring an insane asylum?

An actual visit to a long defunct asylum a few hours from my home was enlightening and disturbing in equal measure. Designed in such a way to promote good air flow through cross ventilation, I imagine when the number of patients swelled from the intended capacity of 240 exceeded 2,400, the air quality suffered.

My main interest was in researching reasons for commitment to an asylum. In the earliest days, they ranged from “reading” and “asthma” to “laziness” and “vicious vices.” Often courts approved commitment of individuals for assessment and treatment, leaving them for lengths of stay dependent on the whim of the facilities administration or medical staff. Families could drop off a child, spouse, or other relative at an asylum door and many times never return for them.

The setting for my book, River of Silence, is such an asylum in the 1950s. When finding photos of nurses in the 1950s, I could practically hear the squeak of nurses polished white leather shoes against black and white tile floors and feel the white uniforms stiff with starch. Legs were always encased in opaque white stockings and white caps topped each head.

In that era, patients diagnosed with depression and anxiety were usually given electroconvulsive therapy (ECT). Lobotomies were performed far more frequently than one might imagine. On a typical day, dozens might be administered one after another, without the benefit of any anesthesia. Pictures of the equipment used were horrifying. The lobotomy tools were the equivalent of a basic ice pick and hammer.

My protagonist, Anastasia, committed to an asylum against her will learns the horror of being there, the helplessness of staying there, and the battle of trying to escape. Her story is told through the connected experiences of various people. Her family, friends, hospital staff, and other patient’s narratives come together to illuminate the picture of how mental health was dealt with over a half century ago. To tell Anastasia’s story through her eyes alone would not encompass the depth of her experience.

In telling this story, I realized the value of seeing how each character’s narrative enriched the story by weaving in details of setting and experiences outside the main character’s view. I wanted, in essence, a novel told in short stories where different elements were given space to expand and contribute to the overall story arc.

And FYI, possibly my favorite character is Agnes, a feisty, thin-as-a-rail patient, whose constant disheveled appearance belies her razor-sharp wit. If you must be in a new unfamiliar situation, you’d want an Agnes in your corner.


So Readers, at my age, writing about the 1950s hardly seems to be historical fiction, yet here we are. Stories set in what era do you most enjoy reading?



HANK: I agree–how can the fifties be historical fiction? Or the sixties? Yikes. What do you think Reds and Readers?

River of Silence is a story about a woman, Anastasia, taken away from her husband and infant daughter and committed to an asylum in the 1950s. Her story is told from multiple perspectives: the patients, her physicians, nurses, an orderly, an aide, and fellow patients. Within their stories is woven the world in which Anastasia finds herself. She undergoes electric shock treatments so common at that time. Her struggle to return home is difficult, punctuated with cruelty, misunderstanding, and despair.

She becomes friends with two women far different from her friends in her life at home. With nothing in common, the three make tenuous steps toward forging a relationship. A sane act in their uncertain world, the three come to care for, support, and defend each other.

The mental health world in the 1950s was in transition with antipsychotics being a newly introduced treatment for mental disorders. Some doctors embraced change, and some eschewed it. Anastasia struggles with the fear of falling prey to her old-school physician who believed lobotomies were a fallback cure for any patient he deemed difficult or incurable. He seems to dislike her, accusing her of not talking or interacting, and she fears the worst. A young physician fights for the patient's right to utilize new treatments. He's aware of the high mortality rate with lobotomies.

Anastasia starts teaching the women on her ward to crochet, and through that, she becomes engaged with staff and patients to the doctor's begrudging satisfaction.

The present-day last chapter has Anastasia's daughter preparing to sell her mother's home. She ruminates with her friend about her mother's journey and her eventual return home.

M. Lynne Squires, an Urban Appalachian Author, writes fiction, essays, and dabbles in poetry. Her first novel, River of Silence is forthcoming in May. She has penned four books, and her work has appeared in numerous journals, such as Change Seven and The Ekphrastic Review, and multiple anthologies, including the Anthology of Appalachian Writers, and Fearless: Women's Journeys to Self-Empowerment. She is a Pushcart Prize nominee and is the 2020 Pearl S. Buck Writing for Social Change Award recipient. She writes at her home in Appalachia beside her furry overlords, Scout and Boo Radley.


RIVER OF SILENCE (currently in pre-order) is available at mountainstatepress.org. The release date is May 31st.