Critics' Opinion:
Readers' rating:
Published Mar 2024
352 pages
Genre: Literary Fiction
Paperback Original.
Publication Information
A searing book club read for fans of Ellen Marie Wiseman and The Girls with No Names set in the Baby Scoop Era of 1960s and the women of a certain condition swept up in a dark history.
It's the 1960s and Lorraine Delford has it all - an upstanding family, a perfect boyfriend, and a white picket fence home in North Carolina. Yet every time she looks through her father's telescope, she dreams of the stars. It's ambitious, but Lorraine has always been exceptional.
But when this darling girl-next-door gets pregnant, she's forced to learn firsthand the realities that keep women grounded.
To hide their daughter's secret shame, the Delfords send Lorraine to a maternity home for wayward girls. But this is no safe haven - it's a house with dark secrets and suffocating rules. And as Lorraine begins to piece together a new vision for her life, she must decide if she can fight against the powers that aim to take her child or submit to the rules of a society she once admired.
Powerful and affecting, The Girls We Sent Away is a timely novel that explores autonomy, belonging, and a quest for agency when the illusions of life-as-you-know-it fall away.
"A likely book-group and public-library choice." ―Booklist
"In this engaging, shocking, heart-wrenching story, readers are pulled along with Lorraine through the ups and downs of her pregnancy, optimistic for her future but saddened by its likely outcome. Fans of Church's The Last Carolina Girl will be clamoring to read this one." ―Library Journal
"Church's story gets deep inside Lorraine's head with tenderness and compassion...This is a heartbreaking tale of prejudice, shame and secret-keeping within families, and a sincere and moving account of one teenager's personal grief and inner strength." ―Historical Novel Society
"It's good to review how far women have come...The Girls We Sent Away is one example of the experience of millions of women during an unenlightened time in history." ―New York Journal of Books
This information about The Girls We Sent Away was first featured
in "The BookBrowse Review" - BookBrowse's membership magazine, and in our weekly "Publishing This Week" newsletter. Publication information is for the USA, and (unless stated otherwise) represents the first print edition. The reviews are necessarily limited to those that were available to us ahead of publication. If you are the publisher or author and feel that they do not properly reflect the range of media opinion now available, send us a message with the mainstream reviews that you would like to see added.
Any "Author Information" displayed below reflects the author's biography at the time this particular book was published.
After receiving a degree in English with a focus on creative writing from Indiana University, Meagan Church built a career as a storyteller and freelance writer for brands, blogs and organizations. Her fiction focuses on overlooked and oppressed women's voices from the past. A Midwesterner by birth, she now lives in North Carolina with her high school sweetheart, three children and a plethora of pets. To learn more about her writing, visit www.MeaganChurch.com, or follow her on Instagram and Twitter @mchurchwriter.
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