Women of a Promiscuous Nature

Donna Everhart's Women of a Promiscuoud Nature opens on an ordinary morning in 1940s North Carolina, when Ruth Foster is stopped by the sheriff on her way to work and swept into the State Industrial Farm Colony for Women. What follows is a harrowing look at the American Plan. This real government program used public health as cover for controlling women's bodies.

Everhart tells the story through three perspectives, focusing on two young women who could not be more different. Ruth enters the Colony with fierce resistance, convinced she is wrongfully imprisoned. What led to her incarceration? She is single. In contrast, fifteen-year-old Stella is much more willing to comply; she even attempts to win the superintendent's favor. This choice is both sad and understandable, given her dysfunctional family background. Her crime? A pregnancy resulting from abuse by her father.

I thought Dorothy, the superintendent, was the book's most unsettling character. She is a woman who sincerely believes she is reforming the women in her care, which makes the forced medical procedures, isolation, and forced labor she oversees all the more chilling. Even when it comes to light that Dorothy is also a victim, carrying severe emotional and physical scars, for me, this does not justify her actions and does not erase personal accountability.

But the novel is not without hope: the solidarity among the inmates gives the story its heart. None of these women were convicted criminals; none were sentenced in a court of law; all were victims held against their will, yet they found ways to protect and sustain one another.

Everhart also highlights the double standard at the core of the program: the men who were the other half of the supposed public health problem were treated but never incarcerated or shamed, while the women lost their freedom, their dignity, their ability to have children, and years of their lives.

What makes the book so powerful is that it is grounded in truth and shows how quickly personal freedoms can evaporate. Everhart shines a light on a dark and largely forgotten chapter of American history, one in which the state violated women's civil rights on a massive scale.

Fans of historical fiction, especially those who appreciate stories of women's resilience, will find it both gripping and immersive. Since the book is based on a real government policy, it's also an ideal book club pick, with much to discuss about the lack of due process, arresting and incarcerating women for no valid reason, institutional power, the gap between stated purpose and real harm, gender double standards, and how such a history not just happened, but stayed buried for so long. It is a difficult read, but an important one.