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(177 reviews)
Author: Visit Amazon's Diane Chamberlain Page
ISBN : 1250010691
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Format: PDF, EPUB
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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. --Julie Trevelyan
Review
“This enthralling novel transfixed me from the very first pages.” —Christina Schwarz, New York Times bestselling author of Drowning Ruth
"Necessary Lies shines!" —Lesley Kagen, New York Times bestselling author of Mare's Nest
“Expertly intertwines history and matters of the heart - love, loyalty and choosing what is right, no matter the consequences." —Heather Gudenkauf, New York Times bestselling author of The Weight of Silence & One Breath Away
“Diane Chamberlain’s Necessary Lies is the most important book she has ever written." —Dorothea Benton Frank, New York Times bestselling author of Porch Lights
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Direct download links available for Epub Necessary Lies Hardcover
- Hardcover: 352 pages
- Publisher: St. Martin's Press (September 3, 2013)
- Language: English
- ISBN-10: 1250010691
- ISBN-13: 978-1250010698
- Product Dimensions: 9.5 x 6.1 x 1.2 inches
- Shipping Weight: 1.2 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
Epub Necessary Lies
Almost from the very first page of Necessary Lies, I could feel the world of the 1960s in North Carolina swirling around me. Even though I'd never been there, I connected with the characters. As a retired social worker who has seen many of these kinds of families, and as a young person during the 60s, I felt very keenly the issues of those days.
Told in alternating first person perspectives, the story shifts between Ivy Hart, a teenaged girl living in a shack on a tobacco farm, and Jane Forrester, the newly married social worker who is passionately involved in this new job of hers, even though her physician husband is opposed to it.
Right away I could relate to each of them, and even though I'd never been in Ivy Hart's shoes, I had many clients who were just as disadvantaged.
The Eugenics Laws were new to my experience, however, even though I had read about these kinds of issues. Cringing as I read, I knew that the story was going to unfold in very dramatic ways. But the issues of mentally challenged individuals, sometimes institutionalized during the 1960s (and before), were practices I had seen firsthand. I will never forget how those experiences would change everything about how I viewed the world.
In this fictionalized tale, we see how one social worker's passion takes her outside the lines, risking everything to save one girl. How does Jane put everything on the line for Ivy? What happens to alter the course she had chosen? And what would be the final outcome years later?
Recent Women's College of Greensboro graduate Jane Mackie wants to do something to help others less fortunate than her. When she brings that dedication to her new job as a caseworker for the Department of Public Welfare, she inadvertently finds herself a part of North Carolina's shameful Eugenics Project.
When Jane goes with her new supervisor to visit those who will be her new clients, she finds their lives infinitely different from her own. One of them includes fifteen year old Ivy Hart, her older sister Mary Ella, Mary Ella's 2 year old son, Baby William, and the girls' grandmother Nonnie. They live in a tiny shack on a tobacco farm. Nonnie and the girls work on the farm; the shack is their rental payment in addition to a meager wage.
Charlotte Werkman, Jane's supervisor, takes her on her rounds the first few days, introducing Jane to her clients and explaining - and demonstrating - the work she will be doing. She will visit the welfare recipients, determine if they are receiving enough subsidies to survive, and bring donated clothing as needed. Jane is warned NOT to get emotionally involved with her clients. She must also try to monitor the girl's behaviors - the Department wants to prevent girls from getting pregnant, so they will supply contraceptive jelly to those who are sexually active. Jane is also supposed to watch for signs of retardation or debilitating illness; she notes that Baby William is still not talking, and that Nonnie and the girls don't appear to be watching him well.
When Charlotte tells Jane that she is preparing an order for Ivy's sterilization, Jane also learns that Mary Ella was sterilized, with Nonnie's permission, immediately after Baby William's birth - and told that she had her appendix removed.
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