The day after her wedding, Donella Ferguson Watson wakes up shackled to a man haunted by the past. The lonely days become weeks, months. Her husband Hugh, a prison doctor, will offer no explanation for their sexless marriage. She comes to suspect the answer lies with a hunger-striking suffragette who was force-fed and held in solitary confinement. But what really happened between Hugh and his prisoner patient? A Petrol Scented Spring is a riveting novel of repression, jealousy, and love, and the struggle for women's emancipation. "Close writes with breathless wit, dizzying passion, a quick sympathy for her two heroines, and an unflinching eye for the mechanics of the medial procedures inflicted on prisoners of conscience."—Kirkus Reviews