When Darkness Comes, A Collection of Linked Stories
While in residence at The Fergus Falls State Hospital (built in the late nineteenth century in a style devised by physician and mental health advocate Thomas Kirkbride), I spent many hours wandering the empty halls of the now-defunct main hospital complex and many more at the local historic society pouring through early 20th century newspaper reports about the hospital’s residents. People were institutionalized for a range of complaints that today would be recognized as depression, domestic violence, PTSD, religious zeal, menopause, and addiction, among other conditions.
Each story in the collection is based on those news items, using an excerpt from one of the news reports as an epitaph, and imagines what the true circumstances behind the news might have been. On the surface, the stories are about people who experienced firsthand Society’s experiments in mental health treatment, not only as patients, but as hospital staff, family, friends, and neighbors of patients. But the stories also tell the tale of the town and chronicle the history of mental health treatment efforts, often mired in good intentions but gone awry.
One of the stories, Uncertain Endings, can be found here: https://litbreak.com/tag/nancy-cook/
Other stories from the collection can be found:
While in residence at The Fergus Falls State Hospital (built in the late nineteenth century in a style devised by physician and mental health advocate Thomas Kirkbride), I spent many hours wandering the empty halls of the now-defunct main hospital complex and many more at the local historic society pouring through early 20th century newspaper reports about the hospital’s residents. People were institutionalized for a range of complaints that today would be recognized as depression, domestic violence, PTSD, religious zeal, menopause, and addiction, among other conditions.
Each story in the collection is based on those news items, using an excerpt from one of the news reports as an epitaph, and imagines what the true circumstances behind the news might have been. On the surface, the stories are about people who experienced firsthand Society’s experiments in mental health treatment, not only as patients, but as hospital staff, family, friends, and neighbors of patients. But the stories also tell the tale of the town and chronicle the history of mental health treatment efforts, often mired in good intentions but gone awry.
One of the stories, Uncertain Endings, can be found here: https://litbreak.com/tag/nancy-cook/
Other stories from the collection can be found:
- Mad, Mad, Mad as a March Hare; When Darkness Comes,
- Resistance is Fatal, Alternating Currents (2021)
- Railroad Rags, Existere (2019)
- Threshing, Flexible Press, Home anthology (2019)
- Illuminations and Illusions and The Afterlife, Darkhouse Press, Sanctuary anthology (2018)
