Necessary Lies by Diane Chamberlain

From 1929-1975, social workers in North Carolina possessed to power to petition the North Carolina’s Eugenic Board to allow sterilization of young women who were “feeble minded, epileptic or promiscuous.” With a family member's consent, young women were told they were having an appendectomy only to find out later that they were sterilized. Set in the 1960’s, Diane Chamberlain’s novel Necessary Lies brings to life this tragic chapter in history through the poignant story of two teenage girls, Ivy and Mary Ella Hart. These young girls live with their grandmother on a tobacco farm in rural Grace County. With the grandmother’s consent, Mary Ella Hart has been sterilized. When Ivy Hart learns about her older sister’s sterilization, she worries and wonders if their new social worker, Jane Forrester, will want to sterilize her as well. Ivy has epilepsy.

Jane Forrester, the new social worker, possesses little understanding of the ways poverty and lack of education disempower poor people. Yet Jane has good instincts and a big heart. She is aghast that women would be sterilized without their consent. Though her colleagues feel they are acting in the best interest of their clients (and saving taxpayer’s money), these social workers are impervious to the systemic injustices that are inflicted on women, minorities, and those with disabilities. Recently married to Dr. Robert Forrester, Jane experiences her own alienation in a system that treats women as second-class citizens. Jane must ask permission from her husband to work outside the home and obtain birth control. Jane wants to help others and at some level is assuaging her guilt about her sister's death. The primary plot revolves around the trust that develops between Ivy and Jane. 

What I admire about this novel is that Chamberlain gives voice to multiple characters whose lives, through no fault of their own, are filled with pain and suffering. She illustrates the ways in which economic and social systems, based on racism and sexism, benefit those at the top of the economic and political hierarchy. These upper class officials feel empowered to "help society" by perpetuating oppressive systems like the sterilization of poor, disabled, and minority women.

The book is a story about poverty and lack of education and the ways in which upper class people can be callous and cruel to those who are less fortunate. It is shocking that those who have suffered little want to believe that those less fortunate are poor because they do not work hard enough, a theme relevant as we begin 2017. Whatever happened to “There but for the grace of God go I?"

The multiple strands of this story come together to create a gratifying ending. Jane helps the Hart family and finds her own freedom. When decades later Jane is reunited with Ivy, who has escaped the poverty of her youth, Jane writes, “ I thought of how you could look at people and never know what had come before. What trials. What horrors. You couldn’t see Ivy’s impoverished roots, or how close she’d come to having no family at all. You couldn’t see the loss of her sister – a loss that would haunt us both forever. The wounds were deep, and yet they didn't show." And doesn’t that apply to most people? We all have hidden wounds that consciously or unconsciously affect the way we act. 

Chamberlain's novel shines a light on a psychological dimension of human beings: the ability to lie to ourselves. After all, oppressors (who can be congenial and refined) often convince themselves that their predations are benign. What is necessary, instead, is genuine compassion and empathy for the plight of others.