The Lies They Told
A Simultaneous Hardcover Edition—Also Available as Trade Paperback Original
In rural 1930s Virginia, a young immigrant mother fights for her dignity and those she loves against America’s rising eugenics movement – when widespread support for policies of prejudice drove imprisonment and forced sterilizations based on class, race, disability, education, and country of origin – in this tragic and uplifting novel of social injustice, survival, and hope for readers of Susan Meissner, Kristin Hannah, and Christina Baker Kline.
When Lena Conti—a young, unwed mother—sees immigrant families being forcibly separated on Ellis Island, she vows not to let the officers take her two-year old daughter. But the inspection process is more rigorous than she imagined, and she is separated from her mother and teenage brother, who are labeled burdens to society, denied entry, and deported back to Germany. Now, alone but determined to give her daughter a better life after years of living in poverty and near starvation, she finds herself facing a future unlike anything she had envisioned.
Silas Wolfe, a widowed family relative, reluctantly brings Lena and her daughter to his weathered cabin in Virginia’s Blue Ridge Mountains to care for his home and children. Though the hills around Wolfe Hollow remind Lena of her homeland, she struggles to adjust. Worse, she is stunned to learn the children in her care have been taught to hide when the sheriff comes around. As Lena meets their neighbors, she realizes the community is vibrant and tight knit, but also senses growing unease. The State of Virginia is scheming to paint them as ignorant, immoral, and backwards so they can evict them from their land, seize children from parents, and deal with those possessing “inferior genes.”
After a social worker from the Eugenics Office accuses Lena of promiscuity and feeblemindedness, her own worst fears come true. Sent to the Virginia State Colony for the Feebleminded and Epileptics, Lena faces impossible choices in hopes of reuniting with her daughter—and protecting the people, and the land, she has grown to love.
In rural 1930s Virginia, a young immigrant mother fights for her dignity and those she loves against America’s rising eugenics movement – when widespread support for policies of prejudice drove imprisonment and forced sterilizations based on class, race, disability, education, and country of origin – in this tragic and uplifting novel of social injustice, survival, and hope for readers of Susan Meissner, Kristin Hannah, and Christina Baker Kline.
When Lena Conti—a young, unwed mother—sees immigrant families being forcibly separated on Ellis Island, she vows not to let the officers take her two-year old daughter. But the inspection process is more rigorous than she imagined, and she is separated from her mother and teenage brother, who are labeled burdens to society, denied entry, and deported back to Germany. Now, alone but determined to give her daughter a better life after years of living in poverty and near starvation, she finds herself facing a future unlike anything she had envisioned.
Silas Wolfe, a widowed family relative, reluctantly brings Lena and her daughter to his weathered cabin in Virginia’s Blue Ridge Mountains to care for his home and children. Though the hills around Wolfe Hollow remind Lena of her homeland, she struggles to adjust. Worse, she is stunned to learn the children in her care have been taught to hide when the sheriff comes around. As Lena meets their neighbors, she realizes the community is vibrant and tight knit, but also senses growing unease. The State of Virginia is scheming to paint them as ignorant, immoral, and backwards so they can evict them from their land, seize children from parents, and deal with those possessing “inferior genes.”
After a social worker from the Eugenics Office accuses Lena of promiscuity and feeblemindedness, her own worst fears come true. Sent to the Virginia State Colony for the Feebleminded and Epileptics, Lena faces impossible choices in hopes of reuniting with her daughter—and protecting the people, and the land, she has grown to love.
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Community Reviews
I finished The Lies They Told and immediately wanted to start yelling at every history textbook that skipped this chapter. Ellen Marie Wiseman takes a brutal piece of American history and turns it into a novel that feels personal, infuriating, and deeply human.
Lena Conti arrives in America from Germany with her mother, teenage brother, and two-year-old daughter, Ella. She is hoping for safety and a better life. Instead, her family is torn apart at Ellis Island after officials judge her brother through cruelty, prejudice, and a language barrier. Alone with Ella, Lena accepts work in Virginia’s Blue Ridge Mountains. She soon discovers another community being targeted by the government in the name of progress using eugenics.
This book floored me. Lena’s story made me furious. While listening to her story, my chest tightened and I kept thinking, "How did the United States let this happen?". The way immigrants, poor families, disabled people, mountain communities, and women were treated as disposable was horrifying. Wiseman does not let the reader look away from the damage caused by forced institutionalization, sterilization, family separation, and the belief that people in power get to decide whose lives have value. Lena’s separation from Ella was devastating. I was right there with her in raging at the injustice of a system that punished people for poverty, language, gender, and circumstance. The officials treated scared families fleeing hardship like inconveniences instead of human beings. Not speaking English does not make someone unintelligent. Needing help does not make someone unworthy.
The Lies They Told is historical fiction, but its questions are still painfully relevant. Who gets welcomed? Who gets judged? Who gets protected? Who gets erased? Wiseman uses Lena’s story to expose a dark part of American history while reminding readers why we have to keep learning from it.
I listened to the audiobook, and Elisabeth Rodgers did a wonderful job bringing tenderness, fear, and strength to the narration. Her performance made Lena’s grief feel intimate without ever turning it melodramatic. She gave the characters humanity which made the cruelty they endured feel even more enraging.
The Lies They Told is not an easy read, but it is an important one. Pick this up if you love historical fiction based on true events, stories about women fighting impossible systems, and books that leave you furious, grateful, and desperate to learn more about the history we were never properly taught.
OK. I might change this rating to an 8. When I was about 235 pages in, I was going to quit on it. It took a very long time for anything to happen, and I was not enjoying it at all. Then, WOW! I wish it was a little more fast-paced, but the final 1/3 of the book was amazing. The only problem I had was that the last 2 chapters were difficult to read because the pollen in the air was making my eyes water.
This was such a powerful story about a movement in the 1920’s, and a horrific precursor to some of the same foundations adapted by Nazi Germany. I told my husband, some parts were so awful, I wondered why I even started this book. But this movement, the Eugenics movement, needs to be read about. What’s scary is that, today, with Christian Nationalism running rampant 100 years later, we haven’t learned our lessons. I was frustrated with how the characters played into the hands of the ‘authorities’, but I did learn how this movement occurred, for the sake ‘progress’.
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