It’s a true crime Saturday! The Purple Nightgown comes from the awesome True Colors Series. If you’ve ever suffered from blinding migraines, you understand how desperate a sufferer can be for a cure.

About The Purple Nightgown

Marvel at true but forgotten history when patients check into Linda Hazzard’s Washington state spa in 1912 and soon become victim of her twisted greed.
 
Heiress Stella Burke is plagued by insincere suitors and nonstop headaches. Exhausting all other medical aides for her migraines, Stella reads Fasting for the Cure of Disease by Linda Hazzard and determines to go to the spa the author runs. Stella’s chauffer and long-time friend, Henry Clayton, is reluctant to leave her at the spa. Something doesn’t feel right to him, still Stella submits herself into Linda Hazzard’s care. Stella soon learns the spa has a dark side and Linda a mean streak. But when Stella has had enough, all ways to leave are suddenly blocked. Will Stella become a walking skeleton like many of the other patients or succumb to a worse fate?

You can find The Purple Nightgown here.

My Review

One thing I like about the True Colors Series is that the stories are built around true crimes. In The Purple Nightgown, Stella Burke, a well to do young lady suffers from migraine headaches. It is 1911 and she’s in search of a miracle cure, which leads her to Dr. Linda Hazzard who has written a book on fasting for better health. Even though Stella is discouraged from going to a fasting sanitorium, run by Hazzard by her lifelong friend, Henry, she tricks him into letting her go. The treatment she finds there is horrible and has to find a way to escape or die. The author explains in the end of the book that Linda Hazzard and this place of torture really did exist in Ollala, Washington. I enjoyed the pacing, the love story and A.D. Lawrence does an excellent job of showing the evilness of Linda Hazzard. She puts her main character right into the clutches of the villain and then shows how faith plays a vital role in survival.