The Women in White by Sarah Pekkanen
8/4/26; 304 pages
St. Martin's Press
The Women in White by Sarah Pekkanen is a highly recommended historical fiction thriller with chapters set in the early 1960s and today. It focuses on four young women participating in fictional novel parapsychology experiments in 1964.
In 1964 the psychology department at Marquis University is run by professor Silas Trimble. The Trimble institute is conducting para-psychological experiments testing for four psychic abilities: precognition, telepathy, psychokinesis, and clairvoyance. Undergraduate Betty Sadler takes part in a study along with three other young women, Kathleen, Ivy, and Helen. As the experiments on their abilities continue they become increasingly intrusive, controlling, and abusive.
In the present day Riley Bell is a nurses aide, but her divorce left her broke and homeless. Riley accepts a caretaker job for an elderly wheelchair bound widow named Betty for the better pay and it's a live-in position. Betty's home decor is stuck in the 60's, and she clearly hasn't left it for years. Riley quickly learns that Betty is quite capable and simply needs help with shopping. When Betty asks Riley to help her find her old friends from years ago, it seems all the files from the Trimble Institute in 1964 are missing. Riley's inquiries open up secrets from years ago and, it seems, a present day danger.
There is no doubt that this is a well-written and compelling novel. The subject matter will grab your attention. Chapters alternate between the experiments conducted on the women in the 1964 and Riley and Betty in the present day. The experiments detailed in the book are loosely based on the secret psychological testing and parapsychology experiments really conducted years ago (think MK Ultra). Pekkanen opens each chapter with excerpts from real documents and journals, and also details them in notes at the end of the novel. I appreciated the research that went into the novel's subject matter.
Part of the challenge with the narrative is switching between two time periods. It might have made more sense to present the novel in two parts, with the first following the plot in the 1960s and part two set in the present day with Riley helping Betty uncover what happened to her friends. I felt like Riley was under developed as a character.
Following the women being controlled and abused by the misogynistic doctor in 1964 became increasingly annoying while reading. They all just listened to him, obeying orders, allowing him to do what ever he wanted without pushing back or just walking away. I understand that this is based on behavior of very young college aged women, late teens or early 20's, in the 1960's but not having at least one of the characters say no and leave is very hard to believe. Not everyone would have been a doormat during that time period. It's also a bit unbelievable that one of the husbands didn't step in and say enough. The endings in both time periods were a little too abrupt and/or predictable.
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