True confession—I should have heeded that overused warning: “Don’t start this book before you go to bed. It will keep you up all night.” Last week I was awake at three o’clock one morning, immersed in Blake’s page-turner. Yikes!

What a brilliant premise! A young woman is found asleep in a remote cabin in the woods with a bloody knife in her hands. In the cabin next door are her two best friends, murdered in their beds. When the police arrive, the woman doesn’t wake up, a victim of the mental health malady “Resignation Syndrome,” the post-traumatic result of having witnessed (or participated in) something so horrifying that her mind has withdrawn from the world and retreated into itself. She is kept alive in an institution for four years until Amnesty International demands that the hospital release her on grounds of “inhumane treatment” or awaken her to stand trial for murder. Psychologist Benedict Prince must find a way to unlock her terrifying secrets and wake her up.

This novel has special resonance with me, since I had worked as a psychotherapist before my retirement. I follow Blake down the rabbit holes of the mind. I’m ensnared in the web he so artfully weaves. At times I find it hard to breathe. And now that I’m finished with the story, I am haunted by it. Read it at your own peril!