In the 1920s supernatural noir novel, The Talking Cure, Violet Humphrey, a young woman confined to the Elsass Institute, must claw her way back to reality by investigating a murder at the asylum. Under magical duress, Sean Joye, a frenemy from the first Sean Joye Investigations novel, The Big Cinch, steps in to help her.
Violet recently sat down with the Elsass Institute’s head nurse, Carrie Bartowski, to give us a bit of insight into her life and thoughts.
Q: What brings you to the Elsass Institute? Do you know why you are here?
Violet: What an inane question. I imagine I arrived by car. I don’t see an airstrip nearby.
Q: [Therapist remains silent.]
Violet: Very well. I do remember a car. A long ride in a car. It was…autumn, I think. Blue sky. Orange trees. Not like now, so bleak and frozen. As to why…I’m told I had a shock at home. Several shocks. I don’t remember the events well, just the feeling. There was something…I needed to unsee. To forget.
Q: [Checks notes.] Your sister says you witnessed a death. And made some threats of harm.
Violet: [Snorts.] My sister. She’s the one who is out of touch with reality. She’s the one who should be locked up in here, not me. Well, maybe with me.
Q: Alright, let’s go with that for a moment—your growing up years. Tell me a little about your family and your place in it.
Violet: My family. It’s a prominent one. My maternal ancestors were among St. Louis’s founders, and my grandfather was a Civil War veteran and respected physician. My father’s people made a lot of money in New York in some sort of wartime manufacturing. Likely guns, but he’s always a bit vague about the details.
Q: Can you share anything more personal?
Violet: My family is mostly dead. Is that personal enough for you?
Q: [Makes a note] Many tragic deaths. Many funerals. Many burials. Perhaps… The staff has found you digging in the ground with your hands several times. Can you talk about that a little? Are you re-enacting one of these deaths? Your child, for instance?
Violet: [Looks at hands, which are scrapped with broken, dirty nails.] I…I don’t know what you mean. I don’t do that.
Q: [Therapist remains silent.]
Violet: Alright, it appears I might. But I don’t remember it. I don’t know why. It doesn’t mean anything to me.
Q: [Therapist remains silent.]
Violet: I am…prompted, I think. Sometimes I feel compelled to go outdoors. But if I do dig—not that I admit I do—I don’t know why.
Q: [Checks notes.] Yesterday, at the close of the session, you told me you are a witch. What did you mean by that?
Violet: [Laughs] Oh, I just thought that would get a rise out of you. I don’t mean a Halloween crone or some special sort of monster. I’m just an ordinary human monster who had a devotion to Mother Earth, once upon a time. A love for our Lady and Lord, our guides along the spirit’s path. I even studied with the New Forest Coven in Hampshire during the war. But that part of my life is over. I find no comfort there. No comfort anywhere, actually.
Q: Sometimes our past coping methods are useful in dealing with new stress.
Violet: That’s about the last thing I would have expected you to say.
Q: People can surprise you, pleasantly even, if you give them a chance. Your friend, Mr. Joye, for instance, seems quite devoted.
Violet: [snorts] Him? An employee. Hoping for money, probably.
Q: [Therapist remains silent.]
Violet: I supposed he’s helped me. But he helps my sister more.
Q: So, he’s not a boyfriend.
Violet: We hardly know each other.
Q: Hmm. [Therapist check clock.] It’s about the end of our time for now. One last question. What would you say your goal is for your treatment here?
Violet: [Pauses.] I don’t know. Get my life back? Although it wasn’t much of a life to begin with.
Q: A different life then. A new life.
Violet: Yes. If that’s possible. I have no idea how that could happen.
***
If you find Violet and her story intriguing, here’s an excerpt from The Talking Cure:
My family had brought me to the Elsass Institute in October—two months ago. I didn’t remember any of it. My sister Lillian claimed I threatened to murder her baby. I didn’t remember that, either. And my sister is a habitual liar. Carrie says I never would have gone through with such a plan—that it had been an obvious cry for help—but I believe that Lillian had made the whole story up.
The last thing I remember from that time was…to tell the truth, and I’m ashamed to say it, I worked a spell on a young man, Sean Joye, without his consent. But I needed—no—was desperate for an ally. Things are fuzzy after that. Bits and pieces had started to float to the surface a few weeks ago. Some were horrible, but I could never hurt anyone. I didn’t think so, anyway.
The pain of my own child’s death makes me acutely aware of other people’s pain. I know one thing; the staff and other patients were more helpful than either doctor—Henry Elsass or Ibrahim Cole.
Kathy L. Brown has a new queer urban fantasy mystery out (ace, pan/bi, gay): The Talking Cure.
Sean Joye Investigations, Book 2
Haunted woman claws her way back to reality by reconnecting with her magical powers in The Talking Cure, a supernatural Yuletide follow-up to The Big Cinch.
Committed to an insane asylum, Violet Humphrey is isolated on the Illinois prairie with only her own thoughts and a persistent new voice in her head for company. When she is accused of murder, Violet suspects her road to both freedom and recovery lies through confronting her painful past and solving the crime. Magically summoned, Sean Joye skids through an ice storm to help Violet, but can they catch the killer and defy an eldritch horror before Violet loses her tenuous grasp on reality?
“The Talking Cure is a marvelous story—an Agatha Christie-style murder mystery infused with a strong sense of the Weird… and a hearty dose of magic on the side. It’s ideal for all fans of the sinister, the surprising, and the strange.” —Cherie Priest, award-winning author of Boneshaker
Warnings: suicidal ideations, references past harm to child.
About the Series
The Sean Joye Investigations series embeds readers in a magic-laced 1920s era St. Louis. The world has barely survived a brutal global war, disease pandemic, and rampant ethnic violence. The cosmic balance is off kilter, and corrupt energies seep through widening cracks in reality. That foul rot has touched Sean Joye in myriad ways. A disillusioned veteran of 1922’s Irish Civil War, he traveled to America to escape supernatural attention, forget his assassin past, and forge a clean new life. Can Sean now master the magical abilities he has rejected for so long in time to protect the innocent and save his own skin?
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Cold air invaded the room, and the flames crackled in greeting. Out in the foyer, I could hear Carrie as she passed off the arriving board members’ coats and bags to an orderly dragooned into footman duty—“Good evening, Doctor. Ah, Doctor, you remember Doctor? And here’s Doctor, right on time.”
I scooted as far away from Dr. Elsass as I could, making for the Christmas tree in front of the parlor windows. Its sharp green scent tried its best to counter the guests’ stench. As much as I avoided the director, I could still hear him chirping in the background. “We’ll talk about that, of course.” His voice dropped to a whisper, but the words flew across the room to me like bright budgies. “Do you think that wise, Emerson? She is in a most fragile state.”
I found Nurse Martin leading my other roommate, Berta, and two additional patients in tree decoration. “Ah, Violet, thanks for joining us.” She held out a sturdy cedar ornament. “Care to help?”
I took it and clung to its warm scent for protection, but despite knowing better—the men would just upset me—I couldn’t help watching their dispute. Dr. Elsass was a chess master, and we were all merely pieces in play. Even this Emerson fellow.
“Don’t you believe in your Talking Cure? She seems much better to me.” Emerson glanced down at his wife and grinned, showing lots of teeth.
The rumor among the maids and kitchen staff was that Blanche was besotted with our therapist, Dr. Ibrahim Cole. Although she was here for “female hysteria”— whatever that was—I had never met a less hysterical female.
Blanche diligently ignored her husband and Dr. Elsass, engrossed as she was in the sketchbook that was never far from her side.
“Aren’t you, darling?” Emerson said, paying no attention to her activity. “Wouldn’t you like a break from chewing off Cole’s ear? You can talk to me if you feel down in the mouth.”
Blanche looked up. “I would like to see my dog.”
Ah, I thought. She was paying attention. I bet she notices more than she lets on.
“See? She’s fine.” Emerson exclaimed to Dr. Elsass, as if he’d cured her female hysteria himself.
“Perhaps a weekend pass,” the director mused, pretending to consider the matter. “We’ll discuss it at the staff meeting. Mrs. Emerson has made remarkable progress, it is true.” He glanced around the room, caught my eye, and beamed. Damn. “And speaking of remarkable progress, you know Mrs. Humphrey, I’m sure.”
Emerson strode across the room and held out his hand. “Percy Emerson. We’ve met, but you may not remember. I knew your father from the Piasa Club.”
I made myself take his hand, briefly, despite his rotten odor. And the maggots I could see writhing about on his palm. Not real, I told myself. Not real. “Please call me Violet.”
“And you should call me Percy. I’m…Sorry for your loss.”
I nodded and made for the tea cart, aiming for a napkin to wipe his stench off my skin. My losses were many. To which did he refer?
Percy drifted back to Dr. Elsass and winked. “Nice try. As I was saying, Blanche is much more…tractable…than before.” He patted his wife on the head. “But your cure takes an awful lot of time and buckets of cash—who’s to say she wouldn’t have snapped out of it on her own?”
For her part, Blanche seemed oblivious to the conversation that was transpiring, intent as she was on sketching the Christmas tree. Percy at last noticed the sketchbook on his wife’s lap. “That’s nice, honey. Gonna puts some colors on there? Lots of green and red?”
She looked up at him, her face blank. Eventually, she said, “Do you think I should? I was interested in the pattern, you see, the way the light—”
“Oh, yes, definitely. Christmas trees are green. With red balls. That might be good enough for a holiday card, if you color it up right.” To Dr. Elsass, he said, “Nice little scam you got going here, doc.” His voice boomed over the chittering noise of the room. “Well played.”
The guests ceased their conversations and turned to the two men. Dr. Elsass and Percy stared at each other for a long minute. At last, the director laughed out loud. “Ah, Mr. Emerson. Always a kidder, as the young people say.”
The room grew darker as the afternoon faded, with just the glow of the hearth and the lights on the Christmas tree. When a fresh contingent of board members lumbered into the parlor, the parrot squawked, and the elderly tree trimmers equally took fright. Dr. Elsass approached the new arrivals, arms outstretched. “Come in, gentlemen. Have a hot drink. There will be ‘something stronger,’ and a fine meal presently.”
Suddenly, a passing shadow blocked the glow from the fireplace, a darkness that smelled of decaying fish, sulfur, and algae bloom. Then Berta, who’d been so calm, sank to her knees, her eyes darting about, and croaked in a wavering voice, “Dagon lives. Mighty Dagon. Dagon. Dagon. Dagon.”
The bird joined in as a chorus, “Dagon, Dagon, Dagon.”
Having no idea to whom or what they referenced, I was struck for a moment with total conviction that Berta, and perhaps the parrot, knew some secret of infinite portent. I utterly believed them, the words a carillon to my ears. I took a deep breath. This wouldn’t do at all. I’m sure it was just what Carrie had been worried about, one of us crazy people acting crazy at the normal-people party.
Kathy L. Brown writes speculative fiction with a historical twist. Her hometown— St. Louis, Missouri, USA—and its history inspires much of her fiction.
The haunted 1920s world of the Sean Joye Investigations book series was conceived in a creative writing workshop in 2004. The idea wouldn’t go away, and Kathy published two Sean Joye novellas while working on her first novel, The Big Cinch, released by the Montag Press Collective in December 2021. The Big Cinch won the 2022 Imadjinn award for best urban fantasy novel.
After spending the pandemic editing and publishing a secondary-world young adult fantasy, Wolfhearted, Kathy wrote the next Sean Joye investigation, The Talking Cure. It will be published in November 2025. A Sean Joye short story, “The Pixie Job,” appears in the 2024 Marathonarium Anthology: Volume II.
Currently she is preparing a high fantasy novella in the Wolfhearted world for publication in 2026. Learn more at kathylbrown.com.
Author Website: https://www.kathylbrown.com
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Thanks so much for hosting Violet today!