The Vanishing Act Of Esme Lennox

This 2006 family saga unfolds through three perspectives: Iris, her grandmother Kitty, and her great-aunt Esme. Iris’s everyday life at her vintage clothing shop is upended when she receives a phone call from Cauldstone Hospital, a psychiatric facility, saying her great-aunt Esme is being released after sixty years of institutionalization. This is unexpected, to say the least: Iris’s grandmother always said she’d been an only child. Kitty has Alzheimer’s so Iris can’t ask her about what happened. Her only recourse is to get to know Esme and learn whatever she might share. What follows is a story about the way women and girls were controlled and harmed by institutionalization, family secrets, and dangerous truths.