Reviews

Five stars for educating me on this heroic woman, three stars for the dry and laborious delivery, so averaging out at four stars. The first 25% of this book was a pleasant surprise and more interesting than I expected, but the story was too long and too dry to keep me hooked. I started reading it physically, took a giant break and then came back to it on audio, but in my opinion, the book would have benefited from more concise storytelling. (It’s about 550 pages or 15 hours on audio.) That issue aside, you absolutely cannot deny how impressive a woman Elizabeth Packard was. Her thoughts, behavior, and drive for change were honestly something I would expect from someone today, so to know this woman was that far ahead of her time was inspiring to say the least. The absolute courage and tenacity Ms. Packard showed in standing up for what she believed in and enduring what her husband put her through was almost unbelievable. We certainly have our share of problems today, but I’m grateful to those who came before me who worked tirelessly (and at their own expense) to ensure my freedoms. (And bravo to the state of Illinois for renaming the mental health center, which still exists, to remove the monster of a doctor’s name and replacing it with Ms. Packard’s! This happened in 2023 and the book was called out as a driving factor, so kudos to the author as well!)

caitlynd13's review against another edition

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I want to come back to this book at some point. It’s extremely well written and tell an amazing story, I just can’t keep looking at it in my ‘current read’ pile and deal with the guilt of still not having finished it

icy_lightning's review against another edition

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challenging dark hopeful informative inspiring mysterious reflective sad tense medium-paced

3.75

haley_kay's review against another edition

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informative inspiring reflective medium-paced

4.0

alidottie's review against another edition

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4.0

4 and a half stars
Whoosh! This book!! I thought when it came in (at my purchase request to my public library) that I just could not handle reading a serious nonfiction book in my life right now, but I started it anyway thinking I would stop soon and return it. Well, as often happens to me when I do this with a really important story, I got pulled right into to Elizabeth Packard's life. From the shock of the fact that a wonderful woman and mother could be condemned as insane based on her husband (a preacher who for financial reason had switched his stand on abolish after having had the same stand as his wife) saying she was insane. All who backed him, mostly based their opinion on her religious views. I am surprised I had not heard of this sooner, but it totally makes sense to me that in the early years of the restoration of Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints that the Lord gathered his people to Utah. Had many stayed in their homes, I have to assume many would have been condemned as insane! I know for certain with my personality and my love of speaking out and speaking up that I could have suffered that fate had I been born 120 years earlier.

Elizabeth Packard was an amazing woman who stood up for not only the rights of women, but for those condemned as insane--rightly or wrongly--as their treatment was anything but humane. Many parts of this book made me sick and infuriated. I have to say though that I had a few parallel moments of thought in my reading of things I have witnessed in my life of women being belittled. Then the author wrote in her postscript about a man belittling a woman in public and calling her crazy for not thinking the same he was. It sounded so much like how Elizabeth was treated in the 1860's, but it was actually Nancy Pelosi being belittled by Donald Trump. She gave a few other tie-ins that had inspired her to find a woman in history who had stood up for women in a man-centric world to help women make some progress to being able to speak up and speak out--and be listened to and believed! We are still working on this. Don't give up my female friends!!!

emilyferrise's review against another edition

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challenging emotional informative reflective tense slow-paced

3.0

I’m trying to read more nonfiction, so my rating could be a reflection of this book not being in one of my preferred genres. However, I loved the content of this book- the history of women’s rights and how mental illness diagnoses were handled in the mid 1800s. The subject, Mrs. Packard, is very likeable and the author does a great job presenting the story.

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