Inspiration for
THE LOBOTOMIST’S WIFE

At its heart, The Lobotomist’s Wife is a novel about the struggle – particularly for women – to be true to themselves in the face of society’s oppressive norms, and the lengths people will go to fit in. This is my first novel and, initially I was writing a more personal contemporary fiction about a woman who is unsatisfied with her idyllic suburban life. Concurrently (but unrelated,) I was reading the non-fiction book Get Well Soon: History’s Worst Plagues and the Heroes who Fought Them by Jennifer Wright (Henry Holt, February 1, 2017.)

When I got to the chapter about lobotomy and Walter Freeman II (1895 –1972,) the doctor who popularized the procedure in the Unites States, I became utterly enthralled, and knew that this was what I wanted to write about. I began my research for The Lobotomists’s Wife.

I had a vague notion of what lobotomy was, but I had no idea that the heyday of this gruesome treatment was in the middle of the 20th century. Or that, by the early 1950s, Freeman was travelling the country like a salesman, lobotomizing dozens of people daily with his out-patient “ice pick” technique. At home, he was prescribing lobotomy for everything from migraines to depression, and more than half of his private patients were women – Rosemary Kennedy being one of the most famous.

I began to re-imagine my contemporary story through the lens of lobotomy. I started by creating the character of an unfulfilled 1950s housewife yearning for more, in the brief period when lobotomy was considered a miracle cure. Initially Margaret (the housewife) was my protagonist, but when a friend asked me about Freeman’s wife I started to think more broadly. What kind of woman could be married to a mad doctor who was more like a serial killer? Freeman’s actual wife, Marjorie, was an economics professor and an alcoholic. Their distant relationship was marred by his infidelity and the tragic loss of one of their four children. That didn’t suit my story. So, I invented Ruth Emeraldine and she became my protagonist. Ruth is a foil for both Robert (my fictional lobotomist) and Margaret -- a character who gives humanity to how and why lobotomy rose to prominence and an example of how a woman can buck convention and stand on her own in a male-dominated world.