The Women in White, by Sarah Pekkanen (REVIEW) — The Bright Dreams of Gifted Young Women... and the Experiments That Crushed Them

 in particular, that two people could communicate simple thoughts to each other via their minds.

We spent hours swapping roles of sender and receiver, trying to transmit images we’d drawn on a set of cards telepathically to each other. 

Our success rates skewed higher than the average, so of course we were positive we had The Gift.

Did we really possess any sixth sense abilities... or were our positives mere chance? 

[We’ll never know; our “tests” were completely unscientific.]

Yet scientific studies have long been conducted, with compellingly positive results.

Some were discussed publicly while they were going on, but probably at least as many studies were kept top-secret by researchers and governments... and remained so for decades, until the truth about what actually transpired became too heinous to stay buried forever.

Sarah Pekkanen’s latest thriller, The Women in White, is the terrifying tale of what one such hush-hush research project might’ve felt like to its unwitting subjects.

 

 

Life in 1964 was, it seems, a very different experience from anything most of us know today. 

Acceptable jobs for women were still few, and even those were only seen as the-thing-one-did-before-landing-a-husband-and-getting-around-to-the-real-women’s-work-of-popping-out-babies.

So when four young women from around the country are invited to participate in a paid parapsychology study—one being conducted by a renowned scientist at a prestigious university, no less—it surely seems like a huge honor. 

But although things start out promisingly enough—and the women quickly bond, becoming fast friends—the actual experiments become increasingly unpleasant... with no way out.

 

When Riley Bell—a desperate woman in the present day—takes a job as live-in caretaker to elderly, recently-widowed, wheelchair-bound Betty, it’s as though Riley is stepping back into time, herself.

For reasons Betty doesn’t explain, her home is like something out of a Sears advertisement... circa 1964. It has nothing most people today take granted—no microwave, no computer, no cell phones.

And curiously, no TV of any sort.

As Riley gets to know her charge, she becomes more and more curious about how and why the older woman is stuck so far in the past... especially since she’s clearly intelligent, curious, self-sufficient, and extremely likeable.

She knows it must’ve been something major, but she can’t imagine what.

When Betty begins opening up—sharing little tidbits about her past, her marriage, and her friends—Riley is deeply saddened by Betty’s tale.

But it’s only when Betty makes a poignant request for help—asking Riley to track down the friends she’d had to leave behind so long ago—and they finally learn what really happened all those decades ago, that both women become truly terrified.

Because all the awful things that happened back then? Seem to be happening again, in the present.

 

 

The Women in White is a thought-provoking story. The fact that such experiments were conducted on people all around the world—often, entirely without their knowledge or consent—is gut-wrenching.

[What a world we live in, that such could ever have been considered okay...]

It’s also affecting—particularly as a female—to read what was considered “normal” for women, less than a century ago. 

Putting on a full face of makeup and doing your hair before hubby woke up. Having a casserole or roast in the oven ready for dinner, and putting a cocktail in his hand the moment he steps in the door after work. (And on and on.)

[It’s one thing to know how patriarchal most societies have been for the majority of humanity’s existence... and another thing, entirely, to read in detail the lengths women went to, to be “the perfect wife” or “the girl who can get a husband”.]

But, while the subject matter is certainly tough to process at times, The Women in White is a fascinating read, alternating between the two disparate time periods of 1964 and now.

Pekkanen does an excellent job of providing contrast, creating memorable characters (that are easy to care about or be repelled by, in some cases), and keeping the tension—and the fear—high.

And the ending? It’s beautifully, touchingly complete... leaving me sad to leave the characters, but feeling lucky I was able to accompany them on this part of their journeys. 

The Women in White will make you think—not only about the existence of psychic abilities, but about the presence of good and evil in the world, and the myriad ways each can show up. 

And it earns my hearty recommendation.
~GlamKitty

 

 

[Thanks to St. Martin's Press for providing this book for review consideration via NetGalley. All opinions are, as always, entirely my own.]