Moral Treatment

Purchase the 2024 Summit Series prize winner, Moral Treatment now from CMich Press, Bookshop.org, and other major online book retailers.

Moral Treatment by Stephanie Carpenter

In 1889, seventeen-year-old Amy Underwood is committed to a psychiatric hospital in northern Michigan. Feeling abandoned by her loved ones, she finds solace in her friendship with a spirited fellow patient, Letitia. Yet as Amy becomes more comfortable at the hospital, she faces a troubling reality: not everyone will leave this place.

The hospital’s aging superintendent, the doctor, believes in the principles of the moral treatment: that an orderly environment, healthy diet, exercise, and uplifting activities will restore mental health. But as the hospital’s population swells, the doctor’s control slips—and those closest to him clamor for change.

In this dual coming-of-age story, as Amy grows in self-awareness, the doctor is forced to reexamine his long-standing professional and personal practices.

About the Author

A native of Traverse City, Michigan, Stephanie Carpenter grew up exploring the then-vacant State Hospital that inspired Moral Treatment. She is the author of Missing Persons: Stories, which won the 2017 Press 53 Award in Short Fiction; her work has also appeared in journals including Copper Nickel, Ecotone, The Missouri Review, Big Fiction, and Witness. She is an Assistant Professor of Creative Writing at Michigan Technological University. You can learn more about Stephanie here: www.stephanie-carpenter.com.

Essays, Interviews, and Reviews: Moral Treatment

• Essay: Necessary Fiction, “Research Notes: Moral Treatment, Stephanie Carpenter”
• Essay: Reading the Past, “Resistant Women: Imagining Voices Inside a Nineteenth-Century Asylum, an essay by Stephanie Carpenter, author of Moral Treatment”
• Interview: Author2Author with Stephanie Carpenter
• Interview: Interlochen Public Radio, “‘Moral Treatment’ explores complex mental health history influenced by Traverse City”
• Interview: WCMU Public Media, “Central Focus: CMich Press Summit Award Winner”
• Review: Foreward Reviews
• Review: Historical Novel Society
• Review: Kirkus Reviews, “Moral Treatment by Stephanie Carpenter”
• Review: The New York Times
• Review: Publisher’s Weekly