Shadowland

About this book

Intelligent gifted astonishingly beautiful - critically acclaimed as a rising star in the 1930s - Frances Farmers glittering world was suddenly torn asunder as she was thrown headlong into the terror-ridden world of a state insane asylum. Her fame eclipsed her name erased from the official movie-studio history books it was as though the women never existed. Shadowland is the harrowing controversial frighteningly true story of what really happened to one of the worlds most luminous young actresses. It is a story of the authors search for the long-forgotten Frances Farmer the search to unravel the enigma of a buried life. It is also a cautionary tale - a real-life fable of how the institutions of society of law psychiatry and the family converge to break a will and ultimately destroy a life. The figure that emerges is one of an enormously complicated woman: a star who rebels against the system who is indifferent ti material success who is tough brutally honest possessed of a biting sarcastic wit with a passionate hatred of injustice that is a constant challenge to authority. arrested on a routine drunk-driving charge Frances rapidly found herself railroaded into a state mental institution incarcerated against her will placed in a violent ward subjected successively to electro-shock and insulin shock bound is a strait jacket and immersed in ice water repeatedly raped and almost certainly the victim of a secret lobotomy. Shadowland is the first full never-before-told account of what actually happened to a major public figure - a masterwork of detecting chilling in its implication for any American. .Citizen