Novels
- The House of Gentle Men (2000)
- The Absence of Nectar (2001)
- Prince of Lost Places (2003)
- Blue Asylum (2012)
- Sisters of Shiloh (2015)
- The Book of Polly (2017)
Novels Book Covers
Kathy Hepinstall Books Overview
The House of Gentle Men
In a year of war, sixteen year old Charlotte sets off on a mission of love in the backwoods of Louisiana, only to be violated by three soldiers in a lonely section of the forest. Charlotte’s young life is destroyed, but another life is growing inside her. Years later, in peacetime, Charlotte comes to House of Gentle Men, a mysterious sanctuary where sad, damaged women are administered to by haunted men wishing to atone for their past crimes. Here, Charolotte falls in love with one of the Gentle Men, a tormented young soldier with a terrible secret of his own. An artistic triumph of the highest order, this debut is a transcendent tale of salvation that celebrates the strength of the heart.
The Absence of Nectar
First person narrator Alice is a precocious eleven year old growing up in rural East Texas with one wish on her mind: Get rid of Simon Jester. Simon is the man who saved her mother from drowning. Simon is her mother’s hero, her savior and her new husband. He’s an enigmatic man whose own family, he says, mysteriously drowned. But soon it becomes apparent that Simon’s family did not drown. Alice and her brother become convinced that Simon intends to poison them. Their mother, Meg, tells her children that they have wild imaginations. Until she comes to kiss them one night, and instead of her usual endearments, whispers a single word: Run. The Absence of Nectar is a finely wrought and suspenseful coming of age novel that confirms the promise of Hepinstall’s highly praised debut, The House of Gentle Men.
Prince of Lost Places
‘Forty million mothers would have followed me out here, if they had known this place existed.’ Martha’s son, Duncan, is the light of her life. After a child is killed at Duncan’s school, Martha decides that she must protect him from the world and from the constant, unnameable dangers that plague parents and their children. So late one night, she kidnaps him and takes him to a cave near the Rio Grande River to live, hidden and isolated. When her hideout is discovered by a strange man, Martha is wary and suspicious, but slowly begins to trust him with her son never realizing that this man is a detective sent by her husband to bring her back home. As the fiercely protective mother and the detective fall in love, they move ever closer to a final confrontation, a terrible choice, and the revelation of Martha’s devastating secret. Full of haunting atmosphere and seductive tension, Prince of Lost Places is a stirring tale that reaffirms Kathy Hepinstall as a rising talent of psychological suspense.
Blue Asylum
Put on trial by her slaveholder husband and convicted of madness by a Virginia judge, Iris Dunleavy is sent to Sanibel Asylum to be restored to a good wife. But Iris knows her husband is the true criminal; she is no lunatic, only guilty of violating Southern notions of property. A pompous superintendent heads this asylum populated by wonderful characters, including his self diagnosing twelve year old son, a woman who swallows anything in sight, and Ambrose Weller, a Confederate soldier whose memories terrorize him into wild fits that can only be calmed by the color blue, but whose gentleness and dark eyes beckon to Iris. The institution calls itself modern, but Iris is skeptical of its methods, particularly the dreaded water treatment. In this isolated place, she finds love with Ambrose. But can she take him with her if she escapes? Will there be anything for them to make a life from, back home? Blue Asylum is the rich, absorbing story of a spirited woman, a wounded soldier, their impossible love, and the call of freedom.
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