A White Room

A White Room
By: Stephanie Carroll
408 Pages

Summary:
At the close of the Victorian Era, society still expected middle-class women to be "the angels of the house," even as a select few strived to become something more. In this time of change, Emeline Evans dreamed of becoming a nurse. But when her father dies unexpectedly, Emeline sacrifices her ambitions and rescues her family from destitution by marrying John Dorr, a reserved lawyer who can provide for her family.

John moves Emeline to the remote Missouri town of Labellum and into an unusual house where her sorrow and uneasiness edge toward madness. Furniture twists and turns before her eyes, people stare out at her from empty rooms, and the house itself conspires against her. The doctor diagnoses hysteria, but the treatment merely reinforces the house's grip on her mind.

Emeline only finds solace after pursuing an opportunity to serve the poor as an unlicensed nurse. Yet in order to bring comfort to the needy she must secretly defy her husband, whose employer viciously hunts down and prosecutes unlicensed practitioners. Although women are no longer burned at the stake in 1900, disobedience is a symptom of psychological defect, and hysterical women must be controlled.--bn.com

If you are looking for a suspenseful read this summer, I encourage you to read A White Rom. I was intrigued by the story early on. Fans of Daphne DuMaurier will enjoy this book, as well. It was a classical suspense/thriller that let your imagination take you where the book left you. You have all the makings of a great read: the ominous house, the daughter desperate to aide her destitute family, a marriage entered into for all the wrong reasons. Oh! And let's not forget the dancing furniture decorated like no other house around.

If you loved Jane Eyre, The Thirteenth Tale, Rebecca, and others like them, you will be gripped to A White Room. A great escape for your mind this summer.