Necessary Lies

July 8, 2013
In this heart-wrenching historical fiction, prolific author Chamberlain focuses on a time in North Carolina’s history that most people would rather forget. It’s 1960, and Jane is a 21-year-old newlywed who’s just accepted a job as a social worker, though her husband, Robert, would rather she stay home like the other country club wives. Her clients—poor tobacco farmers in Grace County, like the Hart family—live in the harsh reality of the rural South, with too many mouths to feed and not much to feed them. Jane is eager to help, until she discovers that part of her job is deciding whether young girls like the vivacious Ivy Hart should be sterilized, in order to keep them from having babies that depend on the state. A captivating look at the little-discussed eugenics program that was responsible for sterilizing more than 7,000 American citizens—some without their knowledge—this engrossing novel digs deep into the moral complexity of a dark period in history and brings it to life. Agent: Susan Ginsburg, Writers House.

August 1, 2013
An idealistic North Carolina social worker defies her employers to save impoverished children from overzealous social engineering in Chamberlain's well-researched page-turner. Chamberlain's author's notes point out that from 1929 to 1975, North Carolina's state-fostered Eugenics Sterilization Program sterilized thousands of women and men. Her novel, set in 1960, examines the impact of such interventions on a tiny, almost feudal enclave of tobacco farmers. Two narrators represent opposite poles of Southern society. Against the wishes of her doctor husband, Jane Forrester, a recent college graduate, has taken a job in Raleigh with the Department of Public Welfare. Ivy Hart, 15, is struggling to keep what is left of her family intact. Her father, Percy, was killed in an agricultural accident. Davison Gardiner, who owns the farm where the white Harts, and their black neighbors, the Jordans, live and work, allows Ivy, her diabetic grandmother, and her beautiful and mentally challenged sister, Mary Ella, to continue occupying their shack rent-free. Gardiner regularly supplements their paltry wages (and welfare checks) with food donations, presumably out of guilt over Percy's accident, although Ivy's mother, who is institutionalized, scarred Gardiner's wife in a fit of rage and grief. As the Harts' newest caseworker, Jane soon finds herself in an ethical quagmire. At DPW's instigation, Mary Ella, mother of 2-year-old William (father unknown), was involuntarily sterilized in the hospital after his birth. Ivy is sneaking out at night to meet Gardiner's son, Henry Allen. By the time Jane realizes that Ivy is several months pregnant, she has succumbed to departmental pressure to petition for Ivy's sterilization on the grounds of childhood epilepsy and low IQ. Once Ivy delivers her child, she will suffer the same fate as her sister, unless Jane is willing to buck the system at the expense of her career. The stakes mount to dizzying heights (even for such an isolated pocket, Gardiner's unbridled sway over his tenants seems extreme); Chamberlain certainly knows how to escalate tension. Socially conscious melodrama at its best.

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Starred review from August 1, 2013

In this powerful novel, Chamberlain (Secrets She Left Behind) peels back the disturbing truths about the eugenics sterilization program implemented in North Carolina during the 1960s. Two voices reveal the heartbreak of the state-mandated program, which sterilized the mentally ill, African Americans, those with disabilities, and women on welfare. At 15, Ivy Hart does her best to hold together family life with her diabetic grandmother; her older sister, Mary Ella, who is mentally challenged; and Mary Ella's baby. They live and work as tenants on a tobacco farm in rural North Carolina. In 1960, Jane Forrester marries a doctor and, against his wishes, takes a job as a social worker with the Harts as clients. She's idealistic and shocked to learn that social workers have the power to petition to have clients sterilized. Jane narrates the story of two young women on a collision course with tragedy. VERDICT Chamberlain brings to light the horrors inflicted for years on victims of the eugenics sterilization program. By allowing Ivy and Jane to tell their stories, Chamberlain humanizes the survivors. This is a troubling account, considering how recently involuntary sterilization occurred in this country. Book groups and fans of Jodi Picoult should appreciate this work. [See Prepub Alert, 3/11/13; recently released, The First Lie (ISBN 9781466839403) is an e-original short story that introduces Ivy Hart at age 13.--Ed.]--Lesa Holstine, Evansville Vanderburgh P.L., IN

Copyright 2013 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

July 1, 2013
Employing accessible characters and compelling language, Chamberlain deeply mines the appalling, little-known history of North Carolina's Eugenics Sterilization Program, in effect from 1929 to 1975. As worker-tenants on a tobacco farm in 1960, 15-year-old Ivy Hart lives with her faltering, temperamental grandmother, mentally slow yet breathtakingly beautiful 17-year-old sister, young nephew Baby William, and her own epilepsy. Jane Forrester, an idealistic social worker, whose status-conscious doctor-husband isn't convinced his wife should hold a job, feels smothered by the social niceties of the early '60s South and starts to question the boundaries and mutual respect in her own marriage. When Jane becomes Ivy's family's social worker, she encounters the state program that seeks to sterilize mental defectives, among others with supposedly undesirable characteristics. Through every choice she makes from then on, Jane triggers an inescapable series of events that thrusts everything either she or Ivy ever held to be true into a harsh light, binding them together in ways they do not immediately comprehend or appreciate. Absorbing and haunting, this should strongly touch Chamberlain's fans and draw those who enjoy Jodi Picoult and Barbara Delinsky. HIGH-DEMAND BACKSTORY: Chamberlain is the best-selling author of 21 novels, and her latest will have a 150,000-copy first printing and be supported by a major marketing campaign.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2013, American Library Association.)