A woman's body floats in the muddy river near where a preacher is baptizing new congregants. Young Dr. Robert Mallory, on his way to the Magdalene Ladies' Lunatic Asylum to take up duties as the resident "general practitioner," retrieves the body. "She be one of them mad women." a young man nearby tells him, and Mallory carries the body to the asylum's front doors. He is confused and disappointed by the indifference of the asylum authorities.

Mallor soon learns that the misogynistic, racist Dr. Kingston and his cranky old assistant Dr. Hardy have little interest in "curing" their patients. In fact, many of them aren't patients at all, but women who have been conveniently "disposed of" by their families.

Lushly evocative, written with elegance and beauty, Women of Magdalene is a richly satisfying story set in the post-Civil War South. Rosemary Poole-Carter creates a vivid picture of that long-vanished world of slavery and southern gentility, and the racism that made it possible.