Hawaiian-born Caroline Kirby was only six years old when her parents died under mysterious circumstances, and she was shuttled off to live with her grandmother in San Francisco. Now, after years under the strict governance of the old woman, followed by an unhappy marriage, the young, newly single Caroline is anxious to return to the lush vistas of her island home, reunite with her long-lost relatives, and above all, finally defy her eccentric grandmother's...

Alicia Western, a doctoral candidate and paranoid schizophrenic, admits herself to the hospital. There, she refuses to talk about her brother. Instead, she contemplates madness and perceived experience.

"It's 1927 and eighteen-year-old Mary Engle is hired to work as a secretary at a remote but scenic institution for mentally disabled women called the Nettleton State Village for Feebleminded Women of Childbearing Age. She's immediately in awe of her employer--brilliant, genteel Dr. Agnes Vogel. Dr. Vogel had been the only woman in her class in medical school. As a young psychiatrist she was an outspoken crusader for women's suffrage. Now, at age...