The Ghost Garden

"A compelling act of connection, leavened with humour, clear-eyed yet packed with hope." —Ann-Marie MacDonald

A rare work of narrative non-fiction that illuminates a world most of us try not to see: the daily lives of the severely mentally ill, who are medicated, marginalized, locked away and shunned.

Susan Doherty's groundbreaking book brings us a population of lost souls, ill-served by society, feared, shunted from locked wards to rooming houses to the streets to jail and back again. For the past 10 years, many who have cycled in and out of the locked wards of the Douglas Institute in Montreal found a friend in Susan, who volunteers on the wards and then accompanies her friends out into the world.

With their full… Keep Reading