Kimberly, a beautiful narcissist, commits a murder of passion and ends up in an insane asylum. Her father agrees with the doctor’s recommendation for her lobotomy. Riley Natch is a criminal psychopath whose heinous crimes lands him in the same institution. When Kimberly was a child, she had watched one of Riley’s murders. Eddie Fisk, a hospital assistant working in the asylum, knows both patients and is drawn into their circumstances to his own demise. This historical novel is set in the early twentieth century at Elgin State Mental Hospital. The director and hospital doctors struggle in providing care for those they believe can be cured amongst those who are forever dependent upon the hospital’s care.

Review comment - The Fading of Kimberly is a well-written and enthralling tale about a narcissistic female child whose privileged family background does little to protect her from the double standards applied to unconventional or demanding women in the early twentieth century. As I read, I couldn’t help but ponder how so many of Kimberly’s so-called character flaws would have been considered as assets had she been born the male heir Weatherspoon had hoped for. Crumpton’s story also works quite well as a psychological thriller as she chronicles the investigation of the murder of Kimberly’s classmate and the subsequent incarceration of the murderer within the criminally insane section of the Elgin State Mental Hospital. I was particularly caught up in the developing relationship between keeper and captor: Eddie Fisk, whose own proclivity to violence is noted, and Riley Nacht, the astronomer. Crumpton also discusses the use of lobotomy at the time for dealing with difficult or rebellious women, noting in her Author’s Notes Section that women in mental institutions in the early twentieth century “had an eighty percent chance” of being lobotomized. The Fading of Kimberly is most highly recommended.

 - Jack Magnus