Perlman's Ordeal

One evening in London in 1906, Dr. August Perlman – music lover, hashish devotee, and pioneer of "clinical suggestion" – is about to leave for the symphony when Sylvie Blum, a hysterical teenage girl is brought into his office.

It seems that another girl's personality is living inside her, and soon a charismatic spiritualist, Madame Helena Barrett, has young Sylvie telling an astonishing story that resembles the myth of Atlantis.

In a time just before the reign of Freud, the doctor and the spiritualist will fight a heated battle for the soul of the girl.

Brooks Hansen evokes a bygone power of the imagination to transcend history and invigorate myth. Like The Chess Garden, his celebrated first novel,Perlman's Ordeal shows that Hansen is an exceptional writer – and suggests that the art of storytelling can change our lives.