Abstract:
A family genealogist opens the book on incest, misplaced affection and insanity in a Pennsylvania mining town – 1884-1963. “Something was wrong with Rose. She lived only four months.” Her arrival precipitated Link Parker’s descent into insanity. While his family dangled on the fringes of respectability in Rosewood, Link lived in a state mental institution, refusing to come home when psychiatrists agreed to release him. Through a box of Victorian postcards, Maggie Parker enters Link’s splintered mind and charts Libby’s struggle to keep her promise to him – making triumph of a family’s tragic experience with mental illness.