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 cure. Riley Nacht 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.