Perlman's Ordeal

London, 1906: Dr. August Perlman - music lover, opium addict, & director of London Hospital's new department of "clinical suggestion" - is on his way to the symphony when an odd patient is brought to his office. Sylvie Blum is fourteen, catatonic, unwashed, dehydrated. It seems that another girl's personality is living inside her. Perlman returns from the symphony with the spiritualist Madame Helena Barrett, who gets Sylvie to talk. As her shadow self begins to tell her story, it bears astonishing resemblance to the myth of Atlantis. The girl within the girl says she once lived there. The doctor wants to suppress her story; the spiritualist wants it told. And so they battle for the soul of the girl. Their conflict is overshadowed by the ghost of Madame's late brother, a brilliantly imagined composer.Hansen, Brooks is the author of 'Perlman's Ordeal' with ISBN 9780374964085 and ISBN 0374964084.