NO HOPE FOR THE HOPELESS AT KINGS PARK

In this first book by Jason Medina, we are given fabulously three intertwined stories that for the most part take place at the Kings Park Psychiatric Center, a currently abandoned state hospital, which was once home to thousands of insane and tortured souls. The first of these tales takes place in the 1960s when the hospital used to be known as the Kings Park State Hospital. It focuses around a suicidal adolescent girl named Amanda, who is committed to the hospital’s old adolescent cottages. Over the next few years she experiences both the joys of friendship and the sorrows of loneliness, as she struggles to adjust to her new life. In the second story we are given a new version of an old Long Island urban legend about a murderous woman known only as “Mary Hatchet.” Ever since Mary was committed to the hospital at the tender age of eleven, after the brutal murders of her parents, her thoughts and motive have remained a mystery. Almost a decade later, a twenty-two year old Mary has gained the attention of two doctors, who make it their mission to get into her mind at the risk of unleashing the demon she struggles to keep inside. The final story takes place long after the hospital has been abandoned. When a man wakes up with amnesia on the shore of the Long Island Sound near the decayed structures of the old hospital, he begins a long journey that will take him back in time to his earliest forgotten memories and through a series of dreams and flashbacks, until he remembers everything. By that time, he may wish he stayed with amnesia.