I'd read two other Diane Chamberlain novels. Pretending to Dance which I read for my community book club and The Stolen Marriage which I didn't like quite as much, but in this time of coronavirus, I think about it often.
What a story! Apparently well into the 1970s, there was a eugenics program in North Carolina. Yes, you read that right. Until the 1970s, a board selected people that they felt shouldn't reproduce and they sterilized them. Most other states abandoned the practice shortly after WWII because it was too closely associated with Nazi Germany.
Necessary Lies is the story of young, idealistic social worker, Jane, and some of her clients. Jane takes over from another social worker although her training is cut short when the woman training her falls and breaks her leg. We meet Jane's clients, some of the people who live and work on the Gardiner tobacco farm. It's the Jim Crow south.
Necessary Lies is also the story of 15-year old Ivy Hart. After her father's death and her mother's commitment, she lives with her grandmother, her 17-year old sister, and her sister's 2-year old son. Her grandmother has diabetes and is not aging well. She's not up to the task of raising Ivy, Mary Ella or Baby William. Mary Ella is "feeble-minded" and Baby William is most likely following in his mother's footsteps. The task of running their sharecroppers home on the Gardiner farm is up to Ivy who is dealing with epilepsy.
Jane gets a little overly involved with the Hart family which causes problems in her new marriage as well as problems at work.
Not great literature but wow, what a story! At times I had to stop and think. Wait! This was happening in the 1960? Unimaginable. I'd highly recommend.
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