Connecticut provides both a local setting for the Birdsey family’s life and the jurisdictional framework shaping Thomas Birdsey’s treatment. The novel moves between the family’s community in Three Rivers and state authorities whose decisions place Thomas under prolonged institutional control, making the state a connection between private experience and public policy.

Local setting and family life

In June 1968, the Birdsey twins graduated from John F. Kennedy High School in Three Rivers. Their mother marked the occasion with a shared gift: a portable Royal typewriter in a dark-blue case, secured by duplicate keys. The scene places an ordinary family milestone in a specific Connecticut community, while the shared keys and machine introduce objects associated with the twins’ closeness and common history.

The typewriter arrives through their mother’s practical ceremony: each graduation card contains a key and directs the brothers to the front-hall closet. At home, Thomas tests the machine with a typing exercise, while Dominick types an insult about his brother. Their mother ends the teasing and kisses them both. The moment gives Three Rivers a domestic scale, showing the family’s warmth and friction before the later conflict over Thomas’s care becomes entangled with state institutions.

Hartford and state authority

Connecticut’s government enters the story through decisions made beyond the family home. Lisa Sheffer traces Thomas’s reassignment to the state commissioner’s office in Hartford, describing the order as though it had come from above. Hartford thus functions as the administrative center from which authority reaches the hospital and affects Thomas’s prospects, even when the decision-making process seems remote to his family.

The state’s mental-health policy is also shaped by the public response to the Jimmy Lane case. Lane, who had wandered away from a supervised group while on a day pass from Westwood, committed a violent act that intensified existing stereotypes about people with mental illness. The case provoked hostile media coverage and public demands for punishment. After the insanity defense prevented Lane’s conviction, the governor dismissed the commissioner and the department was reorganized; the Psychiatric Security Review Board emerged from that political aftermath. The novel presents the board not as a neutral abstraction but as part of a system altered by a highly visible case and the state’s desire to restore public confidence.

Connecticut’s review and confinement system

Thomas’s own confinement proceeds through that system. After Thomas is taken to Shanley Memorial, a surgeon initiates a Physician’s Emergency Certificate, giving the hospital fifteen court-ordered days to observe whether Thomas is dangerous to himself or others. Sheffer tells Dominick that the certificate cannot be overturned quickly: the initial period is a minimum, and Thomas’s release is not immediately within his brother’s control.

The pressure behind the state’s actions becomes clearer when Dominick reads coverage portraying Thomas as a potential public menace. He comes to understand the confinement at Hatch as bound up with public relations and the restoration of order, rather than simply an assessment of Thomas as an individual patient. The state’s later review confirms the force of that process: the board votes unanimously to retain Thomas for one year, citing potential danger to himself and others, with another review scheduled for October 1991. Sheffer asks for a follow-up in six months instead. Through these procedures, Connecticut becomes the setting for a conflict between family advocacy, institutional risk judgments, and the political demand for public safety.