The Crusade for Forgotten Souls

Winner of the 2019 Minnesota Book Award for Minnesota Nonfiction The stirring story of the reform movement that laid the groundwork for a modern mental health system in Minnesota In 1940 Engla Schey, the daughter of Norwegian immigrants, took a job as a low-paid attendant at Anoka State Hospital, one of Minnesota’s seven asylums. She would work among people who were locked away under the shameful label “insane,” called inmates—and numbered more than 12,000 throughout the state. She acquired the