Welcome back! It’s the 6th week of First Sentence Friday/Free Book Friday!
Happy 4th of July to all! 
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About the Book
Accused of “promiscuity” in 1940s North Carolina, a young woman unjustly incarcerated and subjected to involuntary medical treatment at The State Industrial Farm Colony for Women decides to fight back in this powerful, shockingly timely novel based on the long-buried history of the American Plan, the government program designed to regulate women’s bodies and sexuality throughout the first half of the 20th century.
The day Ruth Foster’s life changes begins the same way as many others—with a walk through her North Carolina hometown toward the diner where she works. But on this day, Ruth is stopped by the local sheriff, who insists that she accompany him to a health clinic. Women like Ruth—young, unmarried, living alone—must undergo testing in order to preserve decency and prevent the spread of sexual disease.
Though Ruth has never shared more than a chaste kiss with a man, by day’s end she is one of dozens of women held at the State Industrial Farm Colony for Women. Some, like 15-year-old Stella Temple, are brought in at their family’s request. For Stella, even the Colony’s hardships seem like a respite from her nightmarish home life.
Superintendent Dorothy Baker, convinced that she’s transforming degenerate souls into upstanding members of society, oversees the women’s medical treatment and “training” until they’re deemed ready for parole. Sooner or later, everyone at the Colony learns to abide by Mrs. Baker’s rule book or face the consequences—solitary confinement, grueling work assignments, and worse.
But some refuse to be cowed. Against Mrs. Baker’s dogged efforts and the punishing weight of authority, Ruth and other inmates find ways to fight back, resolved to regain their freedom at any cost . . .
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First Sentence Friday Thoughts
Stella Temple is a unique case at the Industrial Farm Colony for Women. For one, she’s one of the youngest inmates at age fifteen, and while she’s experienced a horrific homelife, she’s fairly well-adjusted and exceptionally smart. Her character is a conglomeration of individual young women I encountered as I read through various resource materials. Her reasons for being there are historically accurate, sadly.
In North Carolina, some of the earlier history that brought about the idea of reform and who would oversee it was first addressed in a debate on how to “curb white girls’ sexual behavior.” From Bad Girls at Samarcand, Sexuality and Sterilization in a Southern Juvenile Reformatory, by Karen Zipf, are these findings, “Evangelicals viewed these white girls as unfortunates who had “fallen” and required uplifting. Social workers saw them as wayward girls led astray by a bad environment and requiring state intervention. The 1917 debates in North Carolina General Assembly demonstrate that the transitional figures – that is, professional social workers with women’s club experience – bridged the gap between evangelicals and professionals by advocating a white girls’ home that would rescue “fallen” girls from their environments, educate and restore them to southern ladyhood.”
But even more important is this part. “The meaning of white womanhood strongly influenced the protracted conflict over adolescent female delinquents in the transfer of power from evangleical reformers to social workers.”
You may be curious about the emphasis on “white.” First, this was the South in the early 1900s, during the Jim Crow era, and second, there was this “great debate” throughout North Carolina around “the problem of what to do with white girls – that is, runaways and delinquents – who roamed the streets. Race was central, as reformers only discussed the plight of girls identified as white. White supremacy rested upon the idea that white men possessed sexual exclusivity to white women. Street, or “problem” girls threatened this exclusivity by their unrestricted access to all sorts of partners.” (pg. 8, Zipf, 2016)
Stella isn’t a prostitute, but, as you can see, the beginnings of reform in North Carolina were heavily influenced by this and also by white supremacy. There was this thought that if a young woman didn’t obey her parents, was seen out with boys riding around in cars, that they were up to no good and on that slippery-slope toward a social downfall and possibly become one. In Stella’s case, and like with many girls and women eventually, the scope of reform opened up to encompass even the innocents. Stella is what I call an “innocent.” Through no fault of hers, she ends up at the Colony, and for her, it’s a safe haven.
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Chapter 6
Stella
The dorm is empty because everyone at the Colony is working on getting reformed and very soon, she’ll be one of them.
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Question of the Week!
When I was attending school, I recall a student who, after a little stint in a reformatory, came back and was placed in a grade lower than he should’ve been. Other students, myself included, skirted around him like he was dangerous, and a threat in some way. I guess it was that vibe he put off, that he was bad. It was in the way he walked, the way he looked at you as you passed him in the hall with the idea if you got too close, he might try to hurt you in some way. I had no idea he would, no one did, but no one was going to find out.
Have you ever know anyone who’s background was troubled? Someone, like the kid in my school who might’ve attended a reform school? What were they like? What did you think of them, as a person?
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Free Read!
I’ll choose one individual who answers the question/s to win a signed copy of one of the backlist books. It’s reader’s choice out of the following: The Education of Dixie Dupree, The Road to Bittersweet, The Forgiving Kind (with the original cover versus what’s shown here), The Moonshiner’s Daughter, The Saints of Swallow Hill, or When the Jessamine Grows.
The winner is selected and announced here by Monday a.m.
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PRE-ORDER – Because It Really Matters!
Pre-orders gauge the interest and signal to the publisher readers are eager for an author’s next work. If you’re holding out because you might win an ARC or a finished copy from First Sentence Friday, remember you can always give away the extra as a gift to a reader friend. 😉
Pre-order links for your convenience:
- Bookshop.org
- Kensington Publishing Corporation
- Barnes & Noble
- Books-A-Million
- Amazon
- Hudson Booksellers
- Target
- Walmart
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Social Media
Last, but not least, don’t forget to:
- Add Women of a Promiscuous Nature to your Goodreads “To Read” shelf
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Anonymous must be “bn100.” (?)
Yes….I can think of two people off the top of my head. One was a boy who lived up the street when I was 8 or 9 years old. I truthfully do not know if he was troubled, but he gave off that impression. It is entirely possible I was leaping to conclusions. He lived a few houses away with his mother and maybe a sister, I cannot remember. But what gave the family notoriety was that the parents were divorced and the kids lived with the mother. This was in around 1960 I guess in Winchester, Mass., a suburb of Boston. At that time he was the only person I knew whose parents were divorced. The second person who had the reputation of being troubled and of being a “bad boy” was a guy I dated briefly in high school. I think his reputation came from his being kind of an outsider. Of course his bad boy troubled demeanor is probably what attracted me. He started coming to my high school probably junior year. He had his own very cool car. He seemed to have money and was very talented artistically. He was edgy and rebellious, but very independent and did not seem to need or rely on people and he had money. Reading this blog recently makes me realize that had I been born fifty years earlier, I would probably have been a candidate for one of those institutions, not that I did anything promiscuous, but that I was rebellious and non-conformist and I really didn’t care what other people thought. Thinking back over people I’ve known, I’m sure others were troubled and perhaps the most troubled of all, in actuality, were the ones who exerted such a huge effort to fit in and to conform to expectations. The non-conformists were probably less troubled, but more likely to be pegged as such. I do think our society in particular and most societies in general have the tendency to always measure and gauge who fits in and who doesn’t. Those who are too different are labelled in some way.
I had a crush on a boy when I was 13. Of course I wasn’t allowed to date, but he would come to the house to play in my brother’s band, and I would watch them practice. There were all sorts of rumors about Bobby. From a broken home, to living in an orphanage to a bad encounter with our preacher, he was someone to be wary of, and it turns out he wasn’t a good person – at all. When my family went on vacation, he broke into our house and stole my brother’s guitar. We believe he also took our dog, Sandy. I don’t want to think about it, but it’s something I just learned from my brother a few months ago when we got into one of those conversations about the past. You’re right – being different definitely would have put the highlight on you, or me, for that matter. Any of us who bent rules and were, in our way, somehow rebellious, might have seen the inside of a reform school or the Colony. (Yikes)
When I was in my field of dentistry, my office saw kids from juvenile detention…some even came in shackles through the back door as to not bother our other patients. Some of the kids were okay; they really didn’t talk or respond to questions. Maybe they were instructed not to talk? Some of the kids gave us such angry glares, though. Maybe they were nervous because it was a dental office? There was always a correctional officer in the room with us. It certainly was a different kind of experience to say the least.
What you all did at your dentist office is similar to services provided at the Colony. There were doctors who visited to treat women for a variety of illnesses (aside from the STD’s they supposedly had or didn’t have – the testing was flawed and produced false positives. Can you imagine???) but also dentists visited to fill cavities, pull teeth, take care of Vincent’s infections – which totally grossed me out when I looked that up. 🤢
So the medical and dental teams came to the colony vs the colony taking them somewhere. As a dental professional I would have been so nervous. And yes I’ve seen my share of mouth and tooth infections…some very gross and the odor is beyond yucky! 🤢 I’m now retired after 40 years in the field. I retired right before the pandemic exploded…whew!
Yes, that’s right. I found a few historical booklets that were the actual Colony reports with the records of everything done, to include these visits. The only time some went away from the facilities was if they didn’t have a way to, say, perform an operation. Then they would be taken to a local area hospital, but otherwise, there were doctors, nurses, dentists, psychologists, etc., who came to the site.