The Chance to Live Free: A Guest Post by Ellen Marie Wiseman

Shedding light on lesser-known systemic injustices faced by women and children in 1930s Virginia, this is a compelling historical tale about a woman risking everything to protect the truth — and her daughter’s future. Read on for an exclusive essay from author Ellen Marie Wiseman on writing The Lies They Told.

When we think of the campaign to create a “master race”, our minds often turn to Nazi Germany and the horrors of the Holocaust. But the devastating ideology of eugenics, or “racial hygiene”, actually began much closer to home. At its core, eugenics was a racist pseudoscience designed to erase those deemed “unfit” or “defective”. Eugenicists falsely believed that things like criminality, alcoholism, mental illness, and even poverty, were hereditary. These disturbing theories took root not in Europe, but in the United States, where—during the late 19th and early 20th centuries—it infiltrated every corner of American society.

The American eugenics movement influenced stricter immigration laws, justified racial segregation, banned interracial marriage, and led to institutionalization and forced sterilization of both adults and children, many of whom were misled into thinking they were undergoing benign procedures like appendectomies. Some were never allowed to return home. Children were sometimes taken and redistributed as a eugenic effort at “raising the children in a more appropriate home of an elite family.” 

For immigrants—the tired, the poor, the huddled masses yearning to be free—eugenics policies made mere survival a struggle. After a brutal passage to the U.S., they immediately faced the threat of being labeled, among other things, an imbecile, a burden to society, or a danger to the American gene pool, which could result in separation from family, imprisonment, or deportation.

I first encountered the topic of eugenics while writing my WWII novel, The Plum Tree, when I discovered that the U.S. was the first country to implement forced sterilization programs— and that the Nazi party adapted many of its policies, procedures, and theories from American eugenicists. As I continued research for subsequent novels about asylums and institutions, I kept uncovering more ties to this disturbing movement.

I couldn’t ignore those threads. And so, The Lies They Told was born.

My main character, Lena, is a young, unwed German immigrant who, after being separated from her family at Ellis Island because her brother was labeled feeble-minded, chooses to remain in America to give her two-year-old daughter, Ella, a better life. Lena’s courage was inspired by my own mother, who grew up in wartime Germany and made the brave choice to leave everything— her family, her country, her past—for the hope of a new beginning in America. When Lena arrives at the Blue Ridge Mountain home of Silas Wolfe and his children—Bonnie and Jack Henry—she believes she’s finally safe. But her dreams of a better life in America unravel when she realizes Bonnie and Jack Henry have been taught to hide from the sheriff. And as the truth unfolds, it becomes clear that, even though the mountain people are U.S. citizens, they’re facing the same threats she faced on Ellis Island—of being labeled feeble-minded, ignorant, and unworthy so the government can take their children and their land.

While writing The Lies They Told, I could only begin to untangle the shocking web of the American eugenics movement—a dark chapter in our history that echoes many of the injustices we see in the world today. I hope Lena’s story entertains and inspires—but more than that, I hope it invites readers to step into the shoes of those who have lived through fear and injustice—to see their humanity, to recognize their pain, and to remember that all people deserve kindness, dignity, and the chance to live free.