Did you know that back in the late 1800’s you could commit someone for having smallpox or a cold? How about for grief, disappointment, or novel reading?

The list goes on and on, some of the reasons making sense, and some of them just being completely stupid. The other problem with this process was that it was really easy to commit someone who might be completely sane.

In many cases the people who were being committed were women who got pregnant out of wedlock, contracted an STI, or were sexual promiscuous.

In “A Madness So Discreet” by Mindy McGinnis, Grace Mae is one of these poor unfortunate women that has been committed to a Boston insane asylum.

She doesn’t speak about what she has been through at the hands of someone she trusted or about the growing bulge in her stomach, that she didn’t ask for in many ways.

When she finally speaks again it is violently. Grace is sent to the cellar where she meets a visiting doctor who gets her interested in a new study of criminal psychology.

Grace escapes to Ohio where she helps the good doctor try and track down a serial killer using her eye for detail and observation.

This book talks about the thin lines that people tend to walk in life. The lines between good and evil, right and wrong, or even sane and insane.

It’s something that everyone struggles with and to put that kind of subject into a time when it really was a tough question to ask is a sign of an extraordinary writer.

Even though this book is a work of fiction, some part of me wondered how many innocent people went through this kind of situation like Grace Mae.

Locked away from the world in a place where no one believes you even though there is probably nothing wrong with you.

With Halloween just around the corner this is a good book to start getting you in the mood for all the things that go bump in the night.