The Last Carolina Girl had me hooked from page one. It is a phenomenal read about a history the United States tries to forget. This book touches on a medical history of our country that doesn’t get talked about enough. When we hear the word “eugenics,” we think about Nazi Germany in the 1930s and 1940s, but it was happening here too.
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Leah is orphaned at age 14, and her world collapses. She is sent to a home where she hopes to be accepted, only to have her world cave in even more. It turns out she has walked into a home filled with old rivalries and petty grudges. She is living with the physical embodiment of “Hell hath no fury like a woman scorned.” Leah is regularly punished, not for her behavior, but for her parents’ choices that other people disagree with. Leah ends up with physical scars from someone looking for revenge for their unhealed emotional scars. Thankfully, someone from her past comes to her rescue and shows her what a true family can be.
This book broke my heart. As a woman, a human, and an American, this book saddened me deep into my soul.
Women and their bodies need to be respected. There is absolutely no reason for a woman’s body to be controlled by anyone other than herself. And like in this story, those who are trying to take control of a woman’s body are people who are petty and trying to hurt others as a means of making themselves feel better.
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