Norwich ― For years, Julianne Mangin would perk up whenever her mother turned pensive and would spout out tidbits of her family’s colorful and mysterious past.

Beatrice Tillotson, might start with a fragment of a tale of how her mother went into business with an uncle, and the business failed and her mother ended up being committed to Norwich State Hospital. Then the state came and took young Beatrice away from her disinterested father to live in a county home for neglected children just a half mile from the state hospital.

Then there was a tale that Mangin’s great-grandmother, Graziella Metthe, had been committed to Norwich State Hospital years earlier and a doctor decided it would be a good idea to pull out all her teeth ― or as Mangin’s mother described it, “tear out all her teeth” ― to help her recover. It did the opposite and sent her spiraling out of control, Mangin said last week.

In her new book, “Secrets of the Asylum: Norwich State Hospital and My Family,” Mangin, 68, of Silver Springs, Md., a retired librarian from the Library of Congress, turned her mother’s fragmented tales into a detailed account of her family history, and with it, provided an inside look at life at Norwich State Hospital in the early and mid-20th century.

Mangin used her research skills to obtain Norwich Hospital medical records of her four family members who had been committed there, her great grandmother, grandmother and two aunts. Her mother had lived at the county home nearby that later became part of the hospital campus when the children’s home closed in 1941, she said.

She obtained government reports that gave critical reviews of patient care in mental illness institutions and delved into U.S. Census records to verify, clarify and even correct family stories of her ancestors. As the book title states, the 371-page book intertwines family and institutional ties, with soap opera intrigue.

Mangin will be in Norwich this week and will discuss her book and her research during a free program at 5:30 p.m. Wednesday in the community room at Otis Library, 261 Main St., Norwich. Copies of the book, which sell for $20 cash or PayPal payment, will be available for purchase.

Mangin said she will give a brief talk about the book and her research and gear the program to aspects of interest to the audience. She will stress the availability of patient records for anyone interested in following a similar path and researching family members who were patients at Norwich Hospital.

“The availability of these patient records was really important to me to be empowering and to heal old wounds,” Mangin said.

Mangin, who said she has struggled with anxiety and nightmares, said she was fortunate her ancestors were in a Connecticut mental institution, as state records are available in this state. Other states, she said, will not even confirm if a relative spent time at an institution.

“The other thing I want to get across is about Norwich State Hospital,” Mangin said Friday. “My great-grandmother was there, and my grandmother was there. My great grandmother’s story was tragic the way they treated her. And my grandmother, it helped her.”

Mangin’s great-grandmother, Graziella (Bonneau) Metthe, was the one whose teeth were pulled. Mangin’s grandmother, Beatrice (Metthe) Tillotson’s treatment in the 1940s was more beneficial. During World War II, when the hospital faced staffing shortages, administrators enlisted some of the higher-functioning resident patients to help attend to residents.

Following her release from the hospital, Tillotson was hired as a state employee to assist with patient care, Mangin said. Being a petite woman, she was assigned to the female geriatric ward, where she could expect fewer physical encounters with patients, Mangin said.

Mangin said she felt some reservation about publicizing such personal stories about her family, but hopes the broad picture helps people realize they too can research family histories and perhaps find healing for themselves and their families in the process.

“I’ve always been a person who feels the truth is very important to get out,” said Mangin. “I feel in some ways, it helped people heal and understand what happened in this longstanding family trauma. I erred on the side of, it’s better to know than not to know.”

c.bessette@theday.com