About the Book

Book: The Gray Chamber

Author: Grace Hitchcock

Genre: Christian Historical / Suspense

Release Date: January, 2020

Will Edyth prove her sanity before it is too late?

Step into True Colors—a new series of Historical Stories of Romance and American Crime

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?

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About the Author

Grace Hitchcock is the author of three novellas in The Second Chance Brides, The Southern Belle Brides, and the Thimbles and Threads collections with Barbour Publishing. The White City is her debut novel and releases March 2019 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.

More from Grace

I am thrilled to share with you my second novel in the True Colors series, The Gray Chamber, which is set in New York City in 1887. I loved writing about Edyth Foster, our cat-rescuing, spunky heroine who spends her days painting, fencing with her dreamy instructor, and avoiding society at all costs, which as you can imagine, comes back to haunt her before the end. I’ve never written about a character who despised reading, so that was a new one for me. Edyth just doesn’t like to sit still long enough to finish a book, but you’ll find out why later.

I am pretty certain the librarians at my local branch are wondering what in the world my hobbies are, judging from the stacks of fencing books for beginners, histories of New York crime in the 19^th century, and Nellie Bly’s Ten Days in a Mad-House, and more that I have continuously checked out since moving back to Louisiana.

The inspiration for this book came from Nellie Bly’s scandalous exposé for Joseph Pulitzer’s newspaper, The World. In reading Nellie’s articles, I was shocked at the grounds by which the asylum would commit women and that’s when I discovered a tiny mention about an heiress with family members who had her tucked away so they could have her fortune. . .and Edyth Foster was born.

I hope you will enjoy reading about our eccentric leading lady and her fencing master hero, Raoul “Bane” Banebridge. If you are interested in seeing pictures of the asylum and to see what I pictured the characters looking like, check out my Pinterest board HERE.

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“With beautiful description and shiver-worthy scenes, Grace Hitchcock has penned an incredible fiction story based on true history. The Gray Chamber was a fascinating and chilling read. Edyth’s story had me glued to the pages. But as I journeyed with the heiress and her eccentricities, the greed of her family which saw her locked up in an asylum against her will made me grateful for the freedoms I have today. And made me pray that my voice would never be silenced. The nightmare was brought to life so vividly that I found myself holding my breath and then cheering on Bane as he never gave up on Edyth. This is a story that will stick with me for a long time…”

~Kimberley Woodhouse – Carol-Award winning and Best-Selling Author of more than twenty books, including: MissTaken Identity, The Express Bride, The Golden Bride, The Patriot Bride, and The Mayflower Bride.

My Review

The True Colors series has quickly become a favorite of mine. Writing about true American crime stories from a Christian perspective provides sufficient factual information without sensationalizing violence and devolving into lurid details, offering hope in the midst of dreadful circumstances. The accounts may be historical, but they are still issues that plague society, and using fiction to bring attention to them serves to inform readers while hopefully cultivating the seeds of positive change. A similar approach proved to be a motivating factor for contemporary society, as evidenced by one of the secondary but true-to-life figures in this book.

With a sweet, romantic beginning, Grace Hitchcock’s “The Gray Chamber” quickly escalates into a suspenseful, page-turning journey. Although under the guardianship of her uncle until her upcoming twenty-fifth birthday, heiress Edyth Foster already has wealth and security and needs neither, so she defies social convention by participating in the sport of fencing and wearing outfits unbefitting a woman of her rank. As amusing as her eccentricities are, however, they put her in danger of losing her fortune to her uncle, who commits her to the female insane asylum on Blackwell’s Island. There she meets the intrepid journalist Nellie Bly, and both women embark upon a terrifying path to escape the asylum with their sanity intact. Aside from the barbaric treatments and living conditions, the core of the horror of “The Gray Chamber” and other such stories is the broad definition of madness, which results in many women being wrongly committed, and the subsequent inability to discern who is truly insane. As Nellie chillingly remarks, “It is a hard thing to be sane in this pit that seems to be designed to make us mad.” Today this takes the form of gaslighting, the awareness of which is spreading, but in 1887 “All it took was a dishonorable man’s word against an unwanted female to get her committed and a bribe to silence the staff of her fate.” As such, one of Edyth’s observations particularly struck me, when she laments that she had not memorized more Scripture because she took reading it for granted. This is still true of us as Americans who have enjoyed religious freedom, and a reminder to hide God’s Word in our hearts rather than assuming that will always have easy access to it.

“The Gray Chamber” is a book that successfully takes on the challenge of portraying life in a late-nineteenth-century women’s mental asylum realistically but hopefully, so that readers come away with a more compassionate heart and a stronger faith in God, who promises to never leave or forsake us.

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