by Kim McCullough
The murder in the opening section of Rabbit Foot Bill by Helen Humphreys is based on a true-life event in Canwell, Saskatchewan in 1947. Twelve-year-old Leonard Flint is a lonely boy who befriends the town hobo, known to the disapproving townsfolk as Rabbit Foot Bill. Bill is an odd man, a loner who doesn’t seem to like people. He catches rabbits and cuts off their feet to sell to locals looking for luck. Leonard shadows Rabbit Foot Bill throughout town, and asks Bill to teach him to snare rabbits, to garden—all the things Leonard’s own father is not doing. Their odd friendship comes to a swift and violent end when Bill sinks a pair of pruning shears into the chest of Leonard’s number one bully. Bill is tried and found guilty, and sent away.
Years later, Leonard, now known as Dr. Flint, finishes university in Montreal and becomes a psychiatrist. Hired for a plum position at the Weyburn Mental Hospital back in Saskatchewan, Leonard begins his career ready to take on what seems to be a wonderful opportunity. However, it’s quickly evident that things are not going to be easy for Leonard.
The Weyburn Mental Hospital is known at this time for research into the treatment of patients with LSD. The hospital is helmed by Dr. Christianson, who expects his doctors, including an unsure Leonard, to use LSD in order to better understand their patients’ experiences with psychedelic drugs. Being the newest and youngest of the doctors, Leonard feels like an imposter, as though his patients and the other doctors can see through him.
Then Leonard discovers that Rabbit Foot Bill is one of the patients at the hospital, and his interest in Bill is stronger than ever. Humphreys expertly controls the tension in this section, as Leonard becomes increasingly more unstable and isolated from his peers. Leonard makes decisions that bring him ever closer to sabotaging his chance at a successful medical career. One day, under the influence of LSD, Leonard witnesses an act of brutal violence that will bring his time at the hospital to an end, but will not ease his obsession with Rabbit Foot Bill.
Years later, Leonard’s story comes full-circle when he returns back home to Canwell seeking the truth of not only Rabbit Foot Bill’s story, but also the truth of his own traumatic past.
The novel is beautifully written in prose both lyrical and clear. Descriptions of the Saskatchewan landscape capture both the beauty and severity of the prairies and the hard lives of those who live there. Humphreys addresses the unconscionable use of mentally ill human beings as LSD test subjects with subtlety and strength, and she ties this, and Leonard’s own mental health issues to a more universal theme of how mental health is viewed today.
Rabbit Foot Bill is a novel that shows how the traumas and secrets of the past—unspoken words, unaddressed violence—never go away, but are always there, hiding.
Waiting.