This book captured my attention right away. The momentum slowed in the middle but picked up again in Chapter 15. It is an easy-to-read novel with good character development about a haunting topic—one I was unaware of: forced sterilization and institutionalization under American eugenics laws.

There’s a line in the novel that says Hitler got some of his ideas from American eugenicists. Sad but true. The Passing of the Great Race (1916) by Madison Grant and even the United States’ Immigration Act of 1924 emboldened Hitler’s racist ideas. But this is not a novel about Hitler and WWII. It’s about how eugenics policies were enforced in the United States against immigrants and poor white people who were considered morally unfit or feeble-minded—a history most of us never learned.

Americans tend to think we are better than other nations—morally superior, especially when compared to Hitler or other leaders who carried out genocide against some of their nation’s inhabitants. The sense of superiority may have a weaker foundation than we realize. That contemplation alone makes this book worth the read.