From the chilly gray of her hometown on Chicago's North Shore to a palm-speckled, sun-drenched California campus, young Ellen "Boo" Harvey is caught in a depressive descent into mania and melancholy that no one around her has the language, energy, or courage to look squarely in the face. Unheard or dismissed by her family and friends, Boo is forced to grapple with the ferocity of her Madness and the intricacies of her mind alone -- careening from mental paralysis and near-invalidity to recovery and back again.

Despite every privilege afforded to her as the well-heeled daughter of a blue blood family, Boo's trajectory seems terminally inescapable until she meets Jude, a suicidal advocate for the mentally ill in Chicago, who teaches her how to rail against the machines and structures that work around the clock to render an entire class of Americans politically invisible and permanently broken.

An assiduous and provocative debut, MV Perry's A Revolution of the Mind is equal parts political manifesto, tortured self-portrait, and call to action that gazes unflinchingly at the causes and manifestations of contemporary American Madness.

MV Perry is from Winnetka, Illinois. Perry holds a J.D. and a Master's in Public Policy and Administration with a concentration in Urban Mental Health Policy. Perry's capstone paper analyzed the mental health system in Illinois, told exclusively through interviews of people with firsthand experience of mental illness. Perry has worked as a psychiatric hospital volunteer and as a project manager on a federal grant to organize mental health consumers across the State of Illinois.

“A provocative, emotional novel unafraid to bare its teeth.” -Independent Book Review

“Whether A Revolution of The Mind garners the large audience it deserves remains to be seen, but in my opinion, Author Perry has penned a winner in this illuminating and meticulously edited read.” - Pacific Book Review

“…a complex and powerful work…A Revolution of the Mind hits hard…” -San Francisco Book Review, 4/5 stars

“The tone is claustrophobic, as its primary setting is in Boo’s mind, and a sense that insanity is the only sane way to be arises…Perry ably conveys Boo’s vision of a tumultuous world whose collapse might be regarded as a blessing.” -Foreword Clarion Reviews, 4/5 Rating.

RECOMMENDED rating from U.S. Review of Books