There are elements of a nightmare to this story – being locked up and isolated in a psychiatric institution in the nineteenth century, unable to communicate with family, at times tied down to one’s bed, obligated to follow the orders of others. Stephanie Carpenter has written a novel of historical fiction, called Moral Treatment, about a psychiatric hospital across from her junior high school in her hometown of Traverse City. Moral Treatment (Central Michigan University Press, 2025) is the winner of the 2024 Summit Series Prize.
A native of Traverse City, Carpenter grew up across from the then-vacant State Hospital that inspired the novel. Her main character in the novel is 17-year-old Amy Underwood, committed to the hospital for erratic behavior by her parents—a diagnosis that would probably not hold up today.
“Learning about the early history of [the hospital] changed my perspective on it,” she says. “It was a flawed system in the early years, but there was also a progressive impulse behind it, and I think that for all Amy suffers inside the hospital, there’s also a way in which she is momentarily exempted from the kinds of pressures she was feeling from her family and from a society in which she didn’t really fit into on the outside.”
The novel also explores the inner workings and thoughts of its supervising doctor who oversees what was then known as moral treatment: an orderly environment, healthy diet, exercise, and uplifting activities to restore mental health.
Moral Treatment is Carpenter’s second book. Her first book, Missing Persons: Stories, won the 2017 Press 53 Award in Short Fiction. She will be in conversation with author Andy Mozina and reading from the novel at this is a bookstore on Tuesday, March 4th, at 6 p.m. The event is free and open to the public, but registration is requested.
Carpenter is Assistant Professor of Creative Writing at Michigan Technological University in Houghton, Michigan. She lives in Hancock, Michigan.
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