Necessary Lies: A Novel
From the New York Times bestselling author of Big Lies in a Small Town
It is 1960 in North Carolina and the lives of Ivy Hart and Jane Forrester couldn't be more different. Fifteen-year-old Ivy lives with her family as tenants on a small tobacco farm, but when her parents die, Ivy is left to care for her grandmother, older sister, and nephew. As she struggles with her grandmother's aging, her sister's mental illness, and her own epilepsy, she realizes they might need more than she can give.
When Jane Forrester takes a position as Grace County's newest social worker, she is given the task of recommending which of her clients should be sterilized without their knowledge or consent. The state's rationalization is that if her clients are poor, or ill, or deemed in some way "unfit" they should not be allowed to have children. But soon Jane becomes emotionally invested in her clients' lives, causing tension with her new husband and her supervisors. No one understands why Jane would want to become a caseworker for the Department of Public Health when she could be a housewife and Junior League member. As Jane is drawn in by the Hart women, she begins to discover the secrets of the small farm—secrets much darker than she would have guessed. Soon, she must decide whether to take drastic action to help them, or risk losing a life-changing battle.
Necessary Lies is the story of these two young women, seemingly worlds apart, but both haunted by tragedy. Jane and Ivy are thrown together and must ask themselves: How can you know what you believe is right, when everyone is telling you it's wrong?
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Community Reviews
This book made me aware of a program right here in the good ole USofA that I had no idea existed. The Eugenics Board of North Carolina gave social workers the power to sterilize human beings. The social workers used their moral values to decide if another human being would or should be able to produce off spring and add to the American human race. This power was given up until 1977!!!!! I can't believe this happened. The scary part is it could so easily happen again. With more people working for the government than any other company. More people have the power to decide what is right and best for America. With our government trying to take us to a government run health care system. I know that most of the people involved with social worker care seriously thought they were helping. I recommend this book to everyone so they can see for themselves how important it is that our government should not have so much power over its people!
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