Stolen Summers

Literature & Fiction

synopsis

Synopsis

All she has left is her sanity. Will the asylum take that from her too?

In 1939, Matilda is admitted to Ghyllside hospital, cut off from family and friends. Not quite twenty, and forced to give up her baby for adoption, she feels battered by the cruel regime. Yet she finds a surprising ally in rough-edged Doris, who risks harsh punishments to help her reach out to the brother she left behind.

Twenty-five years later, the rules have relaxed, and the women are free to leave. How will they cope in a world transformed in their absence? Do greater dangers await them outside?

The poignant prequel to Matilda Windsor Is Coming Home is a tragic yet tender story of a woman robbed of her future who summons the strength to survive.

bio

Author Biography

Anne Goodwin’s drive to understand what makes people tick led to a career in clinical psychology. That same curiosity now powers her fiction.
Anne writes about the darkness that haunts her and is wary of artificial light. She makes stuff up to tell the truth about adversity, creating characters to care about and stories to make you think. She explores identity, mental health and social justice with compassion, humour and hope.
A prize-winning short-story writer, she has published three novels and a short story collection with small independent press, Inspired Quill. Her debut novel, Sugar and Snails, was shortlisted for the 2016 Polari First Book Prize.
Away from her desk, Anne guides book-loving walkers through the Derbyshire landscape that inspired Charlotte Brontë’s Jane Eyre.
Subscribers to her newsletter can download a free e-book of award-winning short stories.

website

Author Insight

Friends can be found in the darkest places

When I first envisioned my character, Matilda, she had been in an asylum for fifty years. Locked in her own world, she was aloof from the other patients. But I knew she couldn’t have always been so isolated. Did she make friends when she was first admitted to the hospital at nineteen? I’m curious about how friendships can develop between people forced together by circumstance, people who would have little in common in their ordinary lives. So I put Matilda – polite, proper and rather posh – side-by-side with Doris, who is rough, tough and worldly-wise. On their first encounter, they’re suspicious of each other: Matilda thinks Doris is an uncouth bully; Doris thinks Matilda is a snob. That’s their relationship in this extract but, as time goes on, it’s their mutual support that enables them to survive.

Book Excerpt

Stolen Summers

Move your arse. That’s my seat. Despite the shapeless frock that betrayed her lowly status, the speaker seemed too substantial to be a patient. Too menacing. As if the scraps of tin pinned to her bodice were military medals. As if the wooden crutch she leant on were a musket and not a mobility aid.

Matilda’s gaze swept the ranks of unoccupied chairs, differing solely in their placement, as far as she could tell. Her chair afforded neither a window view onto parkland nor a secluded hideaway from the staff. Did it have some arcane value to the disturbed mind?

“Didn’t you hear me? Shove off!”

What would her mother advise? It did not do to pander to bullies, but Matilda was weary. She had to conserve her strength for the serious battles.

As she trudged towards a seat at the opposite end of the room, the madwoman called after her, “I run this ward, new girl. And don’t you forget it.”

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Anne Goodwin

Stolen Summers

Synopsis

Author Biography

Author Insight

Friends can be found in the darkest places

Book Excerpt

Stolen Summers

Comment on this Bubble