The Tin Box

I'm not sure what drew me to purchase this story but I boy am I glad I did. There is so much I want to say about this book but I don't want to give anything away.

This story has another story within the lives of the main characters. There is also Bill who come to know and care about in the form of the letters he left behind.

The elements of this story draw you in. It is warm, sweet, frustrating, and bittersweet in turns. I really love the beauty of the ending. This story is so well worth the reading.

Note: This review is for the audiobook and the rating reflects the impact of the narrator.
Of the fifteen hundred books I’ve read in the M/M genre, I can honestly say that this is the first time I have ever had tears rolling down my cheeks as I came to the end of the story. Yes, I’ve felt joy and sadness and shed tears as I read other stories, most often somewhere in the climatic culmination of the storyline, but this time the tears came at the end, and they were from a combination of both the happiness I felt for the MCs and the absolutely poignant sorrow I felt for the man who wrote the letters contained in the “tin box”.
When William Lyon comes takes a job as caretaker at the abandoned Jelley Valley State Insane Asylum, which was the largest mental hospital in California for over a century, he thought he’d find peace and solitude to work on his doctoral dissertation and heal from the recent breakup of his marriage. William is gay and he’s finally admitted it out loud, but he has no idea of what to do about it. He’s just planning to focus on work while he waits for the divorce to be final.
But two things happen to disrupt his plans. The first is that he meets Colby Anderson, a young and flamboyant gay man who happens to be the assistant postmaster and general store clerk. Colby is everything William would never want to be, yet William is immediately attracted to this fun-loving man, who takes him in hand to teach him about the world of gay men. Starting with introducing him to M/M romance novels and porn, and moving onward to going out to a gay bar in a nearby town, Colby shakes up William’s world. But they do become friends, and William starts to realize that he cares more for Colby than he thought he could. And Colby? He cares for William but puts a distance between them when he realizes his attraction because he wants William to have time to sample what’s out there and discover his personal type without Colby hampering his efforts.
The second thing that shakes up William’s world occurs concurrently with his buildup of friendship with Colby. It’s the discovery of a tin box in the wall of one of the former patient rooms. The box contains letters from a patient named Bill to his lover, Johnny. The letters start in 1938 and span four years, with each one telling of Bill’s heartbreak and need to get back to Johnny. He speaks of his love, and he speaks of the horrific treatments he’s given to cure him of sexual depravity and homosexuality. The letters taper off shortly after Bill mentions the name of a treatment he’s about to get. William’s research reveals that the treatment is now known as a frontal lobotomy.
I loved the story, both the contemporary romance between William and Colby, and the story of Bill, a lonely gay man pining for his lost love. The research William and Colby undertake to find out more about Bill and Johnny and the facts that are revealed about treatment of homosexuality serve to make this story personal, powerful, and meaningful. It’s a story I am unlikely to forget and one that I will highly recommend to others.
So why 4 hearts? I hated the voice the narrator, KC Kelly, gave to Colby. The voice was soft and lispy and so totally campy, it was downright offensive. This narrator does not have the vocal range of others I’ve heard and certainly does not have the type of voice that can convey Colby’s youth and energy. I would be embarrassed to let someone think I recommended listening to his vocalization of Colby so I absolutely do not recommend the audiobook version of this story. The story should be rated at 5 hearts or more. It was that good! The narration is a one, if that. In good conscience, I can’t downgrade the rating that others perceive as the story’s rating so I simply went down one point. I highly recommend this book, in e-book format, to anyone who is interested in the history of the treatment of homosexual men in the 20th century and, of course, to those who want a sweet romance coupled with a potent message.
Review by Barb
heartsonfirereviews.com

What a powerful book. Wonderfully written, gripping, and a bit of an emotional roller coaster, which I enjoyed. I loved William and Colby as characters. The themes were well explored in the book, and I can say that my reading time was well spent!

'The Tin Box' was recommended to me by a friend and the description lured me in. I'm always fascinated by psychology so I was very interested before even opening the story. I'll be the first to admit that the beginning, when William is being given a tour of the abandoned insane asylum he is going to be the caretaker for as he finishes his dissertation, had me thinking of \"RedRum\". Jack Nicholson was creeping through my head and his visage saying \"I'm back\" kept running across my mind. This is my first experience with a Kim Fielding book, but based on its appeal, it won't be the last.
William struck me immediately as being really uptight. Not in a snobby way, at all, just wound too tight as if he'd never really relaxed and taken the time to figure out who he really is. He is a psychologist, but as such, he didn't seem to understand his own strengths and weaknesses very well. William has been hired to be the full-time caretaker at the Jelley's Valley State Insane Asylum which was shut down in eighty-two but the building is on the national historic register and, thus, must be protected from vandals. William (not Will, not Bill and definitely not Willy) is going through a divorce and since he and Lisa never really had very much, he left basically everything with her at the apartment when he moved out. So, now he's got a very quiet and peaceful place to stay and finish his dissertation. Then William finds the tin box hidden in the wall of what must have been a patient room. It comes as a shock to William when he opens the tin box to realize it contains letters from an inmate named Bill, to his lover, Johnny, and they began in 1938. Bill was institutionalized for loving a man.
Colby I adored from the moment he leaped onto the pages. Out and proud, Colby is Jelley's Valley resident queer and as he says \"So hey I figured I'm gonna be the most authentic fucking me I can be!\" Colby is comfortable in his skin, knows who he is, and, even better, he accepts who he is. Something William envies quite a lot. Especially since William is fairly certain he, himself, is a construct of who he thinks he should be. It came as no real surprise to discover William grew up in a very religious home and when he began to realize he was attracted to men he begged his parents and his pastor to help him. He prayed and prayed, he even went to aversion therapy camp, but when he was twenty he lost his faith in God and replaced it with science. He tried by marrying Lisa but after a while she realized there was something not quite right and they dissolved their marriage rather peaceably. Except for William's overwhelming guilt at disappointing people again.
William and Colby begin an interesting friendship and Colby is exactly what William needs. William is slowly beginning to shed some of his stiffness, i.e. wearing shorts, wearing a T-shirt instead of a button-down Oxford and a sport coat, sleeping in his boxers instead of pajamas. Are you getting the picture of William? When Colby discovers that William has never done anything with a man other than kiss a boy in high school, Colby declares himself William's fairy godfather. This involves showing William gay porn, frank conversations that leave William blushing, and an outing to a fairly sedate gay bar. What William realizes at the bar, though, is he pretty much only has eyes for Colby even though he knows they are just friends. When Colby and William move the teaching to more hands-on, pun intended, it is sweet, intense, and very hot.
I greatly enjoyed this book and I can't recommend it enough. The tale of what was done to Bill in the name of psychiatric treatment for sexual deviance was horrific. The fact that these treatments were done to many people, not just homosexuals, is not a pleasant chapter in humanity's drive to understand and treat mental illness. Bill's story and the letters he wrote made me cry and it was so very easy to see why William related to Bill and his story. The love story between Colby and Will was phenomenal, but watching Will figure out who he was and what he wanted from life was extraordinarily moving. Buy this book. Read it. Cherish it.
NOTE: This book was provided by Dreamspinner Press for the purpose of a review on Rainbow Book Reviews

This is one of the most incredible books I’ve ever read. The events in this story are horrific but very, very true. Over the years, I’ve forgotten what life used to be like for homosexuals but this brought it all back.

This is not a comfort read but neither is it a totally depressing one. Kim Fielding has created a perfect balance of truth, sadness and joy and I recommend this book to anyone who wants more than the usual MM romance. There is definitely romance but there is so much more.