The Painted Bridge

JUST OUTSIDE LONDON,
behind a high stone wall, lies Lake House, a private asylum for genteel women of a delicate nature. In the winter of 1859, Anna Palmer becomes its newest patient. To Anna’s dismay, her new husband has declared her in need of treatment and brought her to this shabby asylum.

Confused and angry, Anna is determined to prove her sanity, but with her husband and doctors unwilling to listen, her freedom will not be easily won. As the weeks pass, she finds other allies: a visiting physician who believes the new medium of photography may reveal the state of a patient’s mind; a longtime patient named Talitha Batt, who seems, to Anna’s surprise, to be as sane as she is; and the proprietor’s bookish daughter, who also yearns to escape.

Yet the longer Anna remains at Lake House, the more she realizes that—like the ethereal bridge over the asylum’s lake—nothing and no one is quite as it appears. Not her fellow patients, her husband, her family—not even herself. Locked alone in her room, driven by the treatments of the time into the recesses of her own mind, she may discover the answers and the freedom she seeks … or how thin the line between madness and sanity truly is.

Wendy Wallace’s taut, elegantly crafted first novel,
The Painted Bridge,
is a story of family betrayals and illicit power; it is also a compelling portrait of the startling history of the psychiatric field and the treatment of women—in society and in these institutions. Wallace sets these ideas and her characters on the page beautifully, telling a riveting story that is surprising and deeply moving.

Praise for

THE PAINTED BRIDGE

“I was gripped by this fantastic book. Chilling, heartwarming, very well written and researched, this is an unusual novel about Victorian England.”
—ROSIE BOYCOTT, author of
A NICE GIRL LIKE ME
and
OUR FARM

“
The Painted Bridge
is something special: an intriguing and disturbing tale of the reality of women’s lives behind the veil of Victorian respectability that will have resonance today. Beautifully written and evoked.”
—RACHEL HORE, author of
A GATHERING STORM

“An impressive debut with a captivating heroine and an absorbing story line. A compulsive page-turner.”
—CATHARINE ARNOLD, author of
BEDLAM

WENDY WALLACE
is an award-winning freelance journalist, short-story writer, and author of two nonfiction books. She is a former senior features writer for
The Times Educational Supplement,
and in 2001 she was named Education Journalist of the Year. Her journalism has appeared in
The Telegraph, The Guardian,
and
The Times
. She lives in London.

www.wendywallace.co.uk

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JACKET PHOTOGRAPH BY LORRAINE MOLINA

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