Women of a Promiscuous Nature

Everhart (The Road to Bittersweet) serves up a shocking tale of a reform school for “promiscuous” women in 1940s North Carolina. After 15-year-old Stella Temple is impregnated by her father, her parents take her to the State Industrial Farm Colony for Women, where she’s forced to have an abortion. Ruth Foster, a 24-year-old single woman, ends up at the Colony after she’s stopped by the local sheriff while walking to work and tests positive for a sexually transmitted disease despite claiming she’s never having sex. Landlord Josephine Littles and her female tenants are brought to the Colony following a false accusation that she was running a brothel out of her boarding house. The women vacillate between obeying the rules in hope of early release and conspiring to escape, until one resident’s shocking behavior threatens all their lives. Everhart expertly reveals the horrors of forced abortion, sterilization, and unjust imprisonment, while never losing sight of the humanity of her characters. This will stay with readers. Agent: John Talbot, Talbot Fortune. (Feb.)