This historical, feminist, mystical thriller titled BACK WARD is based, in part, on the oral histories of women forced into psychiatric hospitals by husbands, fathers and male doctors during a period of human rights abuses and awakening in America. This era in mental health treatment is at once poignant and painful as barbaric treatments such as malaria injections, pineal gland erosion surgery, electric shock and paternalistic medical care give way to new drugs which brought both hope and affliction to psychiatric patients.
The story bears witness to the brave voices of women and men who shouted at the dawn of a new era in American history - until they were heard. Shocked at Hitler's atrocities, the awakened American-psyche became the architect of the Nuremberg Code and the nation was forced to gaze on its own human rights abuses. The feminist and Civil rights movements that forged this new era would change forever the treatment of the mentally ill in this country.
Woven throughout this tense story are Ella Land's (the protagonist) numerous psychic experiences which lend credence, according to the medical staff, for even more aggressive medical interventions to cure her mental illness. At the crisis point of the story Ella is scheduled for the dreaded pineal gland erosion surgery, narrowly escaping it with the help of a compassionate nurse. She moves into this civil rights era to challenge and change the treatment of the mentally ill.
Excerpt from the novel
"Bleed-through," Grandmother called it. "You get the bleed-through," she'd say, nodding her head, looking deep into my eyes, a mysterious look in her own.
Grandmother said I was born with second sight and Grandmother knew what she was talking about. She helped mother at my birth and later told me she cried out: "Oh, Sarah, she's got the veil over her eyes."
A piece of the placenta draped my eyes, until they washed it away. Grandmother said that was a certain sign of second sight.
Mother admired Grandmother's psychic abilities, but they frightened her sometimes, too. She said when she was growing up, they'd get up in the morning and Grandmother would say, "We're gonna have company today so let's get the house all cleaned up." That was before phones were common place and Grandmother was never wrong. Mother said she could never misbehave. Grandmother saw the truth in everything; looked right through the eyes and saw the lies.
Grandmother had a visitation from her dead son Ed, mother's older brother. He died in the first World War of spinal meningitis in a field hospital. There was a big out break in camp during that War and a lot of young guys died. He was only seventeen and Grandmother's favorite child.
They shipped him back home in a sealed casket that couldn't be opened. And Grandmother never really believed he was in it, or so Mother said.
Before his body arrived in town by train, Grandmother was hanging up clothes at the line back of the house. She heard his foot steps right away as he strode through the house, looking for her. "He always walked heavy on the wooden floor boards," she said.
Before she could turn from the line to go into the house, he was there beside her.
"Mama, they're goin' tell you I'm dead, but I'm not." He said it in the clearest voice you ever heard, Grandmother said, and before she could reach out to touch him, he disappeared. Just faded away before her eyes.
Grandmother took his message literally, though. Thought for certain he was still alive, needing only to be found. Maybe lying in some foreign hospital or half-buried in a muddy trench. But the Army said, No. They had a positive ID with his tags and health records. But she never believed them.
She collapsed the day he came home, weeping uncontrollably on his coffin and begging them to open it. They refused and Grandmother never really believed he was in there - even to the day she died. She waited every evening on the front porch for years after that, certain he'd come back, Mother said. But he never did.
"See that boy acomin'? Looks like Ed's walk, Sarah. It's Ed, comin' home for sure. I just know it." She'd jump up and run to greet more than one startled stranger before Mother could stop her. Then she'd watch until the boy went on by. Only to do it again. And again.
Mother said they'd all be sitting around in the evening doing needlework and Grandmother'd burst into tears.
"Someone's sick in California," she'd sob.
This was long after several of her children and grandchildren had moved there. Sure enough, she was always right. They'd get a call confirming Grandmother's premonition, Mother said.
I think her powers even mystified her sometimes. She didn't seem to know what to do with them.
But she adored me. Thought I looked like her little sister, Eva, who died of typhoid fever when the child was only six. Said I had the same big, yellow-green eyes.
Grandmother said she thought the green-eyed people came from a separate place in heaven. Sent in by God every now and then with an important mission.
"Green eyes are rare, Ella. Very rare," she'd whisper low so no one else could hear. "The color of heavenly pastures and golden light. All mixed up together. And they're a sign, Ella," she'd nod with a solemn look. "You've got good works to do here. You remember that now," she'd say and pat me on the back.
"What?" I'd sometimes ask in my childish voice. But she'd just cluck and say, "Now that's between you and God. But I reckon he'll tell you soon enough."
Grandmother had come to Kansas on a pony when she was just fourteen - a pretty little child bride. She never finished the fourth grade but was "wise to the workings of the spirit-world" as everyone who knew her often said.
Grandmother made me feel special. It was because of her I didn't fear the strange things that happened to me as a child.
Like feeling a hand laid on my forehead at night if I was troubled, with no one else there in the room. Or seeing colors around people. And sometimes, if they were really special, golden arcs around their heads, telling me who they really were. Those are the ones who knew what I saw and we shared our silent secret with a mutual look in our eyes.
But most of all, I wasn't frightened when the visions came without warning - when I touched people or their possessions. If it hadn't been for Grandmother accepting these things, as though they were common place, I might've ended up in here long ago. Really gone crazy.
"Grandmother," I whisper, longing for the touch of her long knotty fingers on my shoulder and the assurance of her certain spirit. I call her back from the spirit realm, though I know that I shouldn't.