The Last Carolina Girl
A Novel
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- £12.99
Publisher Description
"Unforgettable, this a powerful debut to savor." — Kim Michele Richardson, New York Times bestselling author of The Book Woman of Troublesome Creek
A searing book club novel for fans of Where the Crawdad's Sing and The Girls in the Stilt House following one girl fighting for her family, her body, and her right to create a future all her own
Some folks will do anything to control the wild spirit of a Carolina girl...
For fourteen-year-old Leah Payne, life in her beloved coastal Carolina town is as simple as it is free. Devoted to her lumberjack father and running through the wilds where the forest meets the shore, Leah’s country life is as natural as the Loblolly pines that rise to greet the Southern sky.
When an accident takes her father’s life, Leah is wrenched from her small community and cast into a family of strangers with a terrible secret. Separated from her only home, Leah is kept apart from the family and forced to act as a helpmate for the well-to-do household. When a moment of violence and prejudice thrusts Leah into the center of the state’s shameful darkness, she must fight for her own future against a world that doesn’t always value the wild spirit of a Carolina girl.
Set in 1935 against the very real backdrop of a recently formed state eugenics board, The Last Carolina Girl is a powerful and heart-wrenching story of fierce strength, forgotten history, autonomy, and the places and people we ultimately call home.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Church debuts with a dynamic and wrenching tale of family secrets and eugenics. Leah Payne's mother died in childbirth, and when her lumberjack father dies in 1935, she's taken away at 14 from her rural North Carolina home and forced to work as a "helpmate" for the Griffins, a well-off family near Charlotte. A closet-size bedroom on the back porch, verbal abuse, and a slap from Mrs. Griffin make Leah feel unwanted in her new home. She tries to befriend the Griffin children, but Mrs. Griffin keeps her isolated and busy with chores. She isn't allowed to go to school, and is generally viewed as a problem. Then a local doctor, who advocates for the forced sterilization of the "feebleminded," takes Leah as a patient at Mrs. Griffin's urging. The plot surges toward a powerful crescendo with an action that is both cruel and savage, and a revelation of Mrs. Griffin's secrets. Church effectively dramatizes historical injustice in this searing tale, and adds lush details to descriptions of Leah's life before Charlotte. This author is off to a strong start.
