About the Book:
While 1920s Charlottesville, Virginia, is a charming place to grow up, there's one thing Carrie Buck doesn't like about her hometown--her home. Taken from her mother, Carrie is put up for fostering as a toddler. At age ten, Carrie is forced to leave school to work as a domestic. But when Carrie turns up pregnant at seventeen, it is Miss Mora, a Scottish immigrant and Charlottesville's most competent midwife, who she turns to. Fearing their nephew's assault of Carrie will be discovered, Carrie's foster parents claim custody of her infant daughter and fraudulently commit her to the Virginia Colony for Epileptics and Feebleminded. Dr. Priddy, the colony's superintendent, deceptively labels Carrie an imbecile, unfit to bear children. In pursuit of a legal argument granting states the right to forcibly sterilize individuals, he exploits her.
Praise for No Perfect Mothers:
"This story is important because it is history that isn't history--women still don't have sovereignty of their reproductive rights. This story is propulsive because it gives us a character to root for. This story is memorable because of Zacharias's command of language and insight into human nature. No Perfect Mothers is a book that provides all the pleasures of a great novel and then some." - Beth Ann Fennelly, author of Heating & Cooling
"Karen Spears Zacharias makes sure that the story of Carrie Buck doesn't disappear behind the details of the evil forces that converged to bring about her wrongful sterilization, a procedure some called the 'Mississippi appendectomy.' In heartfelt and carefully rendered prose, Zacharias imagines the life a woman whose name is often only thought of within the confines of a famous legal case related to the eugenics movement. This is a book for our times, since it is hard to read No Perfect Mothers and not think of the hard choices women are being forced to make today." - W. Ralph Eubanks, author of A Place Like Mississippi
"From a century-old knot of injustice, Karen Spears Zacharias pulls a thread of story that speaks to injustice now. No Perfect Mothers joins a true story richly imagined to both local kin and the U.S. Supreme Court in a case that dealt misery to thousands. But it is the immediate tale of Carrie's struggle for dignity that will catch you. How can a girl child, judged and wronged, deprived of all she loves, ultimately prevail? She can wait for this book, as this book now waits for you." - Kim Stafford, author of As The Sky Begins to Change
My Thoughts:
Karen Spears Zacharias’ No Perfect Mothers is a biographical fiction about Carrie Buck, the young woman at the center of Buck v. Bell. The Supreme Court’s ruling in Buck v. Bell legally legitimized eugenics-based sterilization across the country and opened the door for the abuses highlighted in novels like The Lies They Told and Take My Hand. Zacharias clearly recognizes the lasting impact of this decision, and it is fair to say her fiction expands discussion of this uncomfortable, infuriating, and often overlooked history.
Unfortunately, the novel's narrative style didn’t appeal to my tastes. The story headhops from one character to the next, often several times in a single chapter, without so much as a page break to denote the shift in perspective or timeline. The opening chapter alone features eight character perspectives in 1872, 1896, and what I assume is 1923, as the exact year of the first scene is not explicitly stated.
Continuity issues also complicated my reading experience. Carrie reflects on learning Emma was a resident of the Colony a week before they were allowed to meet in 1924. This statement contradicts the disclosure in Emma’s letter to Carrie the previous December and the correlation Carrie draws between herself and her mother while journaling at the Colony shortly after her arrival.
Several scenes and anecdotes also came across as underdeveloped and unfocused. Mrs. Harding appears in a single chapter in which the reader is privy to her observations of Carrie and faculty gossip about the Dobbs household. The relationship between Mrs. Harding and Carrie is not directly explored, a fact which undermines the impact of Carrie’s tribute to Mrs. Harding later in the book. Other chapters, such as that dedicated to Mora’s family and her great-uncle’s friendship with the Weaver Poet, Robert Tannahill, have no evident purpose within the context of the narrative.
Karen Spears Zacharias | Mercer University Press | Novel Published 2024
Unsolicited Review from Personal Collection
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