The Women in White by Sarah Pekkanen (2026)
This extraordinary thriller, bouncing between present day and 1964, left me saddened and angered on behalf of the four lead characters. As young women in '64, Betty, Helen, Kathleen and Ivy participated in ESP experiments conducted by a distinguished and intensely driven University professor of parapsychology. Over 60 years later, Betty, widowed, wheelchair bound and living a lonely hermetic existence, still wonders what became of the women with whom she formed such a deep sisterhood bond of shared experiences.......
Betty enlists Riley, the new young caregiver she's just hired, to help her discover what became of her long ago friends. This leads to the flashback stories of each of these four ESP volunteers........and the terrible unforeseen toll the experiments took on their lives. Betty and Riley's investigations also seem to provoke some unknown person with just as much interest in the experiments now as there was in the past.
Author Sarah Pekkanen, draws upon actual histories of parapsychology testing while she deftly evokes what the 1960's were like for young intelligent women like Betty and her friends. They cope with the Professor treating them either like children or lab rats and the various societal expectations put upon them to behave as dutiful wives and mothers. Your heart breaks for them as the experiments become more tortuous and their personal lives start to crumble.
Surprises, danger and a twist reveal await Riley and Betty before their questing for answers comes to an end.. But even in the midst of closure, you can still sense the melancholic memories of women whose remarkable powers united them as they were patronized and mistreated.
Fascinating, compelling read, all the way through. 4 stars (****).
Betty enlists Riley, the new young caregiver she's just hired, to help her discover what became of her long ago friends. This leads to the flashback stories of each of these four ESP volunteers........and the terrible unforeseen toll the experiments took on their lives. Betty and Riley's investigations also seem to provoke some unknown person with just as much interest in the experiments now as there was in the past.
Author Sarah Pekkanen, draws upon actual histories of parapsychology testing while she deftly evokes what the 1960's were like for young intelligent women like Betty and her friends. They cope with the Professor treating them either like children or lab rats and the various societal expectations put upon them to behave as dutiful wives and mothers. Your heart breaks for them as the experiments become more tortuous and their personal lives start to crumble.
Surprises, danger and a twist reveal await Riley and Betty before their questing for answers comes to an end.. But even in the midst of closure, you can still sense the melancholic memories of women whose remarkable powers united them as they were patronized and mistreated.
Fascinating, compelling read, all the way through. 4 stars (****).
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