February 15, 2022
It's the early 1970s, and Civil Townsend, a recent nursing school graduate, has returned home to Montgomery, Alabama to work at a family planning clinic. Civil has a strong belief in women's reproductive rights, and she views this job as an opportunity to help the Black community. As part of the clinic's community outreach, Civil is sent to a poverty-stricken rural area to provide India and Erica Williams with birth control, but when she realizes that the girls have not yet reached puberty and are not sexually active, she begins to question the reasons behind her assignment. As Civil grows close to the family, she becomes acutely aware of the medical abuses--including involuntary sterilizations--taking place at the clinic. Standing up to a racist and classist system will require courage and conviction, and Civil becomes a crusader for justice. By framing the story with Civil's present-day experiences, Perkins-Valdez (Balm, 2015) reminds readers that these events don't belong to a long-forgotten past. This powerful, timely novel is an excellent choice for book clubs, as well as for readers of contemporary fiction featuring strong female characters.
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February 21, 2022
Perkins-Valdez (Balm) captivates with a scintillating story about Black women’s involuntary sterilizations in 1970s Montgomery, Ala. Civil Townshend lands her first nursing job after graduating from Tuskegee University at the Montgomery Family Planning Clinic, where she is instructed to administer the experimental Depo-Provera birth control shot to homebound sisters India and Erica Williams, ages 11 and 13, who live with their sharecropper father in a ramshackle, one-room house. Civil has reservations about giving the shots to her young patients, and her white supervisor later blindsides Civil by ordering the girls to be sterilized after their illiterate father approves the procedure. Civil is mortified and, with the aid of her best friend Tyrell Ralsey, whose parents are lawyers, sets in motion a lawsuit against the clinic. A young, white civil rights lawyer shoulders the case, and the suit expands to include the federal government. Meanwhile, the author movingly explores Civil’s passion for reproductive rights, shaped in part by her decision to abort a pregnancy with Tyrell. The medical field’s unjust and exploitive treatment of Black people has been covered in the landmark nonfiction titles such as Medical Apartheid by Harriet Washington and The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks by Rebecca Skloot, and Perkins-Valdez skillfully adds to the literature with a nuanced story personalized by Civil’s desire for redemption over her role in the sterilizations. This will move readers. Agent: Stephanie Cabot, Susanna Lea Assoc.
April 1, 2022
It's 1973 in Montgomery, Alabama, and when a Black nurse realizes her young patients are being shockingly mistreated, a lawsuit reveals the systemic horror taking place. After graduating as a nurse, Civil Townsend starts work at a family planning clinic in pursuit of her dream of empowering poor Black women. Civil is assigned two young sisters, 13-year-old Erica and 11-year-old India Williams, as off-site patients--she'll visit them at home periodically to give them injections of Depo-Provera. Civil becomes deeply invested in the Williams family, helping them move out of their squalid sharecropper cabin into an apartment and helping the girls' widowed father find a new job that doesn't require him to be literate. But soon Civil's ex-boyfriend Tyrell Ralsey tells her that Depo-Provera hasn't been approved by the Food and Drug Administration, and she starts looking into whether the clinic's patients are being coerced into care without full information. Civil's concern for the autonomy of others is juxtaposed against her secret choice to have an illegal abortion, which she's never fully worked through emotionally despite Ty's attempts at conversation. When the clinic's White director takes over the Williams girls' care and makes an irreversible decision, Civil is thrust into a world of lawsuits and Senate hearings in an effort to seek justice. Author Perkins-Valdez deftly balances an older Civil, now an OB-GYN, acting as the first-person narrator with a young Civil experiencing the emotional weight of these events in real time. The older Civil's narration, as she tells the story in 2016 to her own daughter, not only explains the trauma that Erica and India experienced, but also allows her to explain why even though she returned to medical school and dedicated herself to a career focused on the intersections of race, class, ability, and reproductive choice, after more than 40 years she still feels she must return to seek the Williamses' forgiveness. Inspired by real events, this work of historical fiction admirably balances moral complexity with affecting characters. Vividly highlights the deep and lasting impact of injustice.
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Starred review from April 1, 2022
Inspired by true events, best-selling Perkins-Valdez (Balm) tells the fictional story of Dr. Civil Townsend, a Black woman reflecting on the impact of her first job as a nurse in Montgomery, Ala., in 1973. Civil hopes to make a difference in her community by providing government-subsidized birth control to women living in poverty, but she is concerned when she is told to give Depo-Provera birth control shots to girls who are only 11 and 13. When she realizes that coercion is occurring at the clinic and that the shots could be harmful, Civil knows she must do something. Entwining her life with those young girls, India and Erica, Civil works to improve their destitute situation, but then Civil's boss has the girls sterilized without consent. Horrified, Civil initiates a lawsuit on behalf of the girls, setting in motion the exposure of a nationwide abuse of patients. VERDICT With prose that steeps readers in this heart-wrenching story, Perkins-Valdez confronts with the atrocities that have been inflicted on those living in poverty while giving nuance and dignity to her characters along with glimmers of hope. This is an exceptional read.--Melissa DeWild
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