The Lies They Told by Ellen Marie Wiseman
Historical Fiction
Publisher: Kensington
Published: 7.29.25
Pages: 416
Rating: 4 stars
Format: Trade Paperback
Source: Kensington
Sellers: Amazon
ADD TO: GoodReads
GoodReads Synopsis:
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 face impossible choices in hopes of reuniting with her daughter—and protecting the people, and the land, she has grown to love.
Sophia Rose's Review:
An immigrant story to make you clutch your hankie and marvel at the darker history of the past. Ellen Marie Wiseman’s historical fiction resonates because her history comes unvarnished and blemished touching on the raw emotions inside her readers.
Lena with her little girl, her mother, and her brother journey from Germany to America’s shores hoping to pursue their dream and start a new life only to be separated on Ellis Island when her brother (who is not) is labeled feeble-minded. Lena determines to press on alone with her little girl. Fortunately, a reluctant relation (read hostile and burdened with his own affairs) takes her in when he expected the help of her mother and brother as farm hands and she adjusts to life high and back in the Virginia mountains. The mountain community culture there is different, but she learns to keep house for her widower relation and his children and comes to love the land they are on and her community
Too bad the government craves the land all these poor mountain folk are on and plans to evict them. And, while they’re at it, the local government is out to improve the blood lines in that region with a spot of eugenics against disabled, other colors and races. Lena’s worst fears happen when she is ripped away from her home, her daughter, and extended family, ‘diagnosed’ with promiscuity and feeblemindedness, and put in a state home giving no real choices after that.
The Lies They Told shows the sad side of immigration and government confiscation of private land to create the national park, and the darkest of all, imprisoning and mistreating people in state homes because they are differently abled, of another race, or other nefarious reasons. My anger burned and my heart broke during this one. Between the land grabs and the incarcerations, I was overwhelmed with the bad that people can deal each other. The ending did stay in this stark, sad state, but The Lies They Told wrung me out emotionally. Definitely for when a person is in a certain sort of reader mood to handle it.
Author Bio:
Ellen Marie Wiseman is a New York Times and USA Today bestselling author known for writing novels based on real historical injustices, including THE LIES THEY TOLD, THE ORPHAN COLLECTOR, WHAT SHE LEFT BEHIND, THE PLUM TREE , COAL RIVER, THE LIFE SHE WAS GIVEN, and THE LOST GIRLS OF WILLOWBROOK, which was an Indie Next selection, an Amazon Editor's Pick and the B&N “Our Monthly Pick.” Born and raised in Three Mile Bay, a tiny hamlet in northern New York, Ellen is a first-generation German American who discovered her love of reading and writing while attending first grade in one of the last one-room schoolhouses in New York State. Since then, her novels have been published worldwide, translated into more than twenty languages, and sold nearly two million copies in the United States alone. They have also been named to "best of" lists by Reading Group Choices, Good Housekeeping, Goodreads, The Historical Novel Society, Great Group Reads, and more. A mother of two and grandmother to six, Ellen lives on the shores of Lake Ontario with her Husband.
Website: https://ellenmariewiseman.com/
Sophia’s Bio:
Sophia is a quiet though curious gal who dabbles in cooking, book reviewing, piano-playing, and gardening. Road trips and campouts, museums and monuments, restaurants and theaters are her jam. Encouraged and supported by an incredible man and loving family. A Northern Californian transplant to the Great Lakes Region of the US. Lover of Jane Austen, Baseball, Cats, Scooby Doo, and Chocolate.
As a lifelong reader, it was inevitable that Sophia would discover book blogs and the joy of blog reviewing. Sophia is a prolific reader and audiobook listener which allows her to experience so many wonderful books, authors, and narrators. Few genres are outside her reading tastes, but her true love is fiction particularly history, mystery, sci-fi, and romance. Though, sorry, no horror or she will run like Shaggy and Scooby.
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/sophia.rose.7587
Twitter: https://twitter.com/sophiarose1816
GoodReads: https://www.goodreads.com/author/show/13418187.Sophia_Rose
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