Blue Asylum

A woman falls in love with a wounded Civil War solider in this “fine novel embroidered with rich imagery”about the line between sanity and madness (Kirkus Reviews).

When Virginia plantation wife Iris Dunleavy is put on trial and convicted of madness, she knows the real criminal is her husband. After all, the only thing she’s guilty of is disagreeing with him on notions of justice, cruelty, and property.

Sent away to a remote Florida island, Iris meets an odd collection of residents in Sanibel Asylum: some seemingly sane, some wrongly convinced they are crazy, some dangerously unstable. And while Iris isn’t sure what to make of haunted Confederate soldier Ambrose Weller—whose memories terrorize him into wild fits that can only be calmed by the color blue—she does know that his gentleness and dark eyes call to her like nothing she’s ever known before . . .

“Deftly interweaving past and present, Hepinstall sets the struggles of her characters against the rigidity of a traditional Southern society and the brutality of war in an absorbing story that explores both the rewards and perils of love, pride, and sanity itself.” —Publishers Weekly