Ellen Meeropol is a fearless writer. When she picks up her pen and follows her characters, she goes to places and situations lesser writers might avoid: a young pregnant woman awaiting trial (House Arrest, 2011); an innocent academic pulled aside by airport security and incarcerated in a secret holding cell (On Hurricane Island, 2015); a young man walking the blurred reality line of man versus nature (Kinship of Clover, 2017); two sisters estranged by political choices and actions (Her Sister’s Tattoo, 2020).
In her latest book, The Lost Women of Azalea Court (September 2022), Meeropol’s characters meet at the intersection of family secrets, unethical institutional practices, and the heritage of political trauma that erupts when an elderly woman goes missing from Azalea Court, a circle of six bungalows on the grounds of a former state mental hospital.