Frieda's Song

by Ellen Prentiss Campbell

Overview

Frieda's Song, a novel, is inspired by renowned psychiatrist Frieda Fromm-Reichmann. Fleeing Nazi Germany in 1935, she came to the Chestnut Lodge Sanatorium in Rockville, Maryland. Frieda worked there for the rest of her life, establishing the Lodge's reputation for innovative treatment of mental illness, dying in her custom-built cottage on the grounds under mysterious circumstances in 1957. Decades later, psychotherapist Eliza Kline and her teenage son Nick live in Frieda's Cottage, next door to the closed and abandoned hospital. As told by Frieda, Eliza, and Nick, the novel explores the tension between love and work, the strength and limits of relationship, and what healers must do to heal themselves. Frieda's Song is a tale of the way history and chance, and the work and people we love, shape our lives-and how the past is always present, haunting us.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781627203234
Publisher:	Loyola College/Apprentice House
Publication date:	05/25/2021
Pages:	294
Product dimensions:	6.00(w) x 9.00(h) x 0.62(d)

About the Author

Ellen Prentiss Campbell's collection of stories Contents Under Pressure was nominated for the National Book Award. Her debut novel The Bowl with Gold Seams received the Indy Excellence Award for Historical Fiction. A second collection of stories Known By Heart was published in 2020. Her short fiction has been recognized by the Pushcart Press. Essays and reviews appear in journals including The Fiction Writers Review, where she is a contributing editor, and The Washington Independent Review of Books. Campbell has been a Fellow at The Virginia Center for the Creative Arts several times. A graduate of The Bennington Writing Seminars and the Simmons School of Social Work, she practiced psychotherapy for many years. Campbell and her husband live in Washington, D.C. and Manns Choice, Pennsylvania. She is at work on another novel. Connect online at ellencampbell.net.

Editorial Reviews

"In her novel Frieda's Song, Ellen Prentiss Campbell intriguingly explores the lives of two women-one the real-life psychiatrist Frieda Fromm-Reichmann-as they work among the mentally ill and struggle to find acceptance and love in their own lives. In different decades they inhabit the same cottage, suffer anguishing loss, and fight to understand themselves. The connection between the two characters is moving and unusual, and the book is a small miracle."

- Jack El-Hai, author of The Lobotomist and The Nazi and the Psychiatrist

"In Frieda's Song, Ellen Prentiss Campbell deftly weaves a fabric of history and chance from the lives of two very different women separated by time and space, both struggling to balance the claims of work and life, both thoroughly acquainted with their own capacity for self-deception, and both dedicated, heart and mind, to the life-affirming profession of healing."

- Valerie Martin, author of I Give It to You and Mary Reilly

"In this rich psychological thriller the author's subtle choices make for a compelling read. A book that cannot be put down!"

- Gary Stein, author of Touring the Shadow Factory

"Seventy years apart in time, two women's lives form the basis of this provocative novel of parallel narratives. On the eve of the Second World War, Frieda Fromm-Reichmann comes to America in the aftermath of a broken marriage and forges ahead with her passionate commitment to her psychoanalytic practice... Living many decades later in Fromm's cottage we find Eliza Kline, facing her own struggles as a therapist and a single mother determined to protect her vulnerable son. Binding these two forceful women is their resolve to save and hold fast those who give us reasons to live. Like the best therapy, Frieda's Song pushes headlong into unraveling the mysteries of the human heart."

- Steven Schwartz, author of Madagascar: New and Selected Stories and A Good Doctor's Son

"In Frieda's Song, Ellen Prentiss Campbell makes the history of Frieda Fromm-Reichmann and psychotherapy relevant politically as well as surprisingly romantic...Frieda says, 'Human nature tends to health like plants to sunlight.' All of Campbell's characters-both past and present-yearn for their own kind of sunlight. A wonderful, compelling read."

- Diana Wagman, author of Life #6 and The Care and Feeding of Exotic Pets

From the Publisher