**True Colors**: Historical Stories of American Crime
Fiction Based on Strange, But True, History

***Will Edyth prove her sanity before it is too late?***

On Blackwell’s Island, New York, a hospital was built to keep its patients from ever leaving.

With her late parents’ fortune under her uncle’s care until her twenty-fifth birthday in the year 1887, Edyth Foster does not feel pressured to marry or to bow to society’s demands. She freely indulges in eccentric hobbies like fencing and riding her velocipede in her cycling costume about the city for all to see. Finding a loophole in the will, though, her uncle whisks Edyth off to the women’s lunatic asylum just weeks before her birthday. And Edyth fears she will never be found.

At the asylum she meets another inmate, who upon discovering Edyth’s plight, confesses that she is Nellie Bly, an undercover journalist for *The World.* Will either woman find a way to leave the terrifying island and reclaim her true self?

About Grace Hitchcock

Grace Hitchcock is the author of The White City and The Gray Chamber from Barbour Publishing. She has written multiple novellas in The Second Chance Brides, The Southern Belle Brides, and the Thimbles and Threads collections with Barbour Publishing. She holds a Masters in Creative Writing and a Bachelor of Arts in English with a minor in History. Grace lives in southern Louisiana with her husband, Dakota, and son. Visit Grace online at GraceHitchcock.com

My Rating: 4 Stars!

‘This place has stripped away the layers of thick skin, and I am raw, for I have had no one and nothing to lean on here but the Lord.’

1887. Edythe Foster, wealthy heiress, but under her uncle’s care until she turns 25 (which is just months away), is a bit of a madcap, riding a velocipede and fencing, when her uncle finds a strange loophole in her father’s will and commits her to a lunatic asylum just a few weeks before her birthday. No one else knows what he did and think her merely visiting in another state. Edythe is certain she will die in this hell hole. Then she meets another inmate, the reporter Nellie Bly, who has had herself committed to Blackwell Island to do a article for the newspaper she works for. Will they find a way off this island and this horrific asylum before they truly do go mad?

I was fascinated by this book and did a bit of research on my own. This True Colors crime series is fictionalized accounts of true American crimes. I was horrified by the research I did! Blackwell’s Island was a menace to women in this era: tortured, starved, beaten regularly. This is not a long read and it’s compelling. Grace Hitchcock has done a wonderful job of bringing the horrors of this asylum to life. Recommended.

‘I received a complimentary copy of this book from Barbour Publishing and was under no obligation to post a review.’