Necessary Lies by Diane Chamberlain

Powerful and thought provoking

A story primarily told by two girls/women living in North Carolina in the early sixties. As a woman this story really pulls you. Eugenics and sterilization was used and practiced during this time to prevent pregnancy in women and fertility in men deemed “unfit”. However this was the only state where social workers had the right to decided who needed it and why on their own without the consent or knowledge of the patient receiving this treatment. Many were lied to about this surgery never knew they could no longer have children.

Ivy a sweet young girl living with her mentally ill sister and elderly grandmother speaks so true to this era. Her cadence and thinking brings you right into the small rural shack they live in. A shack provided by the tobacco farmer in exchange for work. Ivy and the farmer’s son have been best friends since childhood and we watch as their hidden relationship grows and changes.

Jane, a fresh from college girl, newly married and wanting to experience the work place, tries to put children on hold. She sees a doctor who tells Jane she needs her husband’s permission before contraception will be given.  Landing a job as a much needed social worker, her heart is big and her thinking is too forward for many around her. Jane soon feels out of place socially with her husband’s friends and with her new co-workers.

Ivy and Jane’s path’s converge and what becomes of their friendship helps shape history.

Necessary Lies is a book that will have you sickened by the power others can have over people. Making others feel powerless to have control over their own bodies. Their own choices. Their own decisions.  This book will stick with you and it should.

5 STARS a must read for women.

T~

Release date: September 3, 2013 Out TODAY
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**Given via St. Martin's Press in exchange for review

From the cover…….

Bestselling author Diane Chamberlain delivers a breakout book about a small southern town fifty years ago, and the darkest—and most hopeful—places in the human heart

After losing her parents, fifteen-year-old Ivy Hart is left to care for her grandmother, older sister and nephew as tenants on a small tobacco farm.  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 doesn’t realize just how much her help is needed.  She quickly becomes emotionally invested in her clients' lives, causing tension with her boss and her new husband.  But 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 the battle against everything she believes is wrong.

Set in rural Grace County, North Carolina in a time of state-mandated sterilizations and racial tension, Necessary Lies tells 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?