{"product_id":"the-painted-bridge-a-novel","title":"The Painted Bridge: A Novel","description":"\u003cp\u003eAn elegant  emotionally suspenseful debut  The Painted Bridge is a story of family betrayals  illicit power  and a woman sent to an asylum against her will in Victorian England.  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 Annas 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 notbe 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 patients mind; a longtime patient named Talitha Batt  who seems  to Annas surprise  to be as sane as she is; and the proprietors bookish daughter  who also yearns to escape.  Yet the longer Anna remains at Lake House  the more she realizes thatlike the ethereal bridge over the asylums lakenothing and no one is quite as it appears. Not her fellow patients  her husband  her familynot 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 Wallaces taut  elegantly crafted first novel  The Painted Bridge  i s a s tory o f f amily 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.\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"My Store","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":44966699368501,"sku":"ByrdShop_1451660820","price":25.89,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0627\/8139\/0901\/files\/9781451660821.jpg?v=1770575393","url":"https:\/\/atxbooks.com\/products\/the-painted-bridge-a-novel","provider":"ATX Books","version":"1.0","type":"link"}