Unbroken Bonds

by D.W. Hogan

Overview

"A resounding defense of women’s reproductive autonomy. An elegantly written and damning narrative." - Kirkus Reviews

In 1956 the worst thing a teenage girl could do was to become pregnant. Joanna, Prissy, Jessie, and Mary become lifelong friends when they are incarcerated in the Frances Weston Home for Unwedmothers in Knoxville, Tennessee. Together they endure the culture of shame and soul crushing tactics dispensed by the Catholic Nuns who coerce the teenagers into relinquishing their illegitimate babies. The four young womens’ vow of friendship bonds them as they rebuild their lives in the Deep South during the turbulent 1960’s, while the roles of women and single mothers evolve in the decades that follow. When tragedy strikes, they must decide whether to keep their past secrets or discover the fates of the children they were forced to give away.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781949116533
Publisher:	Woodhall Press
Publication date:	10/05/2021
Pages:	288
Product dimensions:	6.00(w) x 9.00(h) x 0.70(d)

About the Author

D.W. Hogan is a lifelong writer having majored in English at the University of Alabama in Huntsville. She’s the mother of four grown children and grandmother to two. She is a full-time author and lives in Huntsville, Alabama with her husband. Unbroken Bonds is her Debut novel. Check out DWHogan.com for more information. You can follow her on Facebook D.W. Hogan author and on Instagram dawnhoganauthor.

Editorial Reviews

"Unbroken Bonds vividly captures the terrible vulnerability of young white women in the United States in the decades before "reproductive rights" became available to any but the wealthiest of us." —Rickie Solinger, Author of Wake Up Little Susie: Single Pregnancy and Race before Roe v. Wade

"While Unbroken Bonds is a novel, the characters might have been your mothers, grandmothers, aunts, sisters, or the girls with whom you went to school. Each of the young women’s narratives are carefully crafted, and realistic." —Fran Gruss Levin, Author of The Story of Molly and Me, and CUB Board Member

"Dawn shares several sides of the coin, all real and raw glimpses of what first mothers go through... we must be awakened in the truths that separation trauma for the adoptee and first mother lasts a lifetime." —Pamela Karanova, Adoptees Connect, Inc.

"Overall, it’s a narrative that builds slowly, hovering on a photograph as a missing piece in a puzzle, and coalescing in a resounding defense of women’s reproductive autonomy. An elegantly written and damning narrative." —Kirkus Review

"Overall, it’s a narrative that builds slowly, hovering on a photograph as a missing piece in a puzzle, and coalescing in a resounding defense of women’s reproductive autonomy. An elegantly written and damning narrative." —Kirkus Review

From the Publisher

08/27/2021

DEBUT Hogan's debut looks at the difficulties young women faced in the days when teenage pregnancies and unwed mothers were stigmatized by society. In 1956 Nashville, 17-year-old Joanna discovers she's pregnant. Her parents are horrified; Jack, the father of her baby, is married and not in a position to leave his wife; and society is less than forgiving of unwed mothers. Joanna is shamed, disowned, and shipped off to a Catholic-run charity in Knoxville, where she is expected to give birth and then place her baby for adoption. There, she meets three girls who will become her lifelong friends: Jessie, Prissy, and Mary. As the four young women work to rebuild their lives in the turbulent decades that follow, they realize that their unplanned pregnancies—which were often decried as the worst mistake the girls could've ever made—were the events that led all of them to becoming the remarkable women they are. VERDICT While Hogan's novel has a thoughtful and engaging story line, the prose is stilted and choppy, and the voice is often inconsistent. The novel doesn't handle the passage of time well, as it's much too short to adequately cover 25 years of the characters' lives, especially in the time period in which it's set.—Elisabeth Clark, West Florida P.L., Pensacola

Library Journal

2021-06-24
In Hogan’s debut novel, a pregnant teenager’s life is irrevocably changed when she’s sent to a home and school for unwed mothers in conservative 1950s Tennessee.

After 17-year-old Joanna Wilson becomes pregnant, she quickly finds herself in in a Southern gothic nightmare. She suffers physical abuse at the hands of her father, and her married lover, Jack Wyatt, who’s still devoted to his injured wife, sends her off to the Frances Weston Home in Knoxville. It’s a place for young unmarried women to give birth, away from the prying eyes of judgmental Tennessee society; for the women sequestered there, it’s both a schoolhouse and a jail, where the wardens are stoic, “crowlike” nuns. This prisonlike setting, where everything beyond the house’s gardens is off-limits, is fertile ground for Hogan to explore the culture and misogyny of a classist, racist 1950s and ’60s America. The real horror of the home for unwed mothers, however, is not simply its restrictiveness, but what happens to the babies; they’re put up for adoption, no matter what their mothers’ wishes are, and the women never know exactly what becomes of their children. As time passes, the novel follows Joanna and others from the home as they enter adulthood, exploring how they grapple with the trauma of separation. Over the course of the novel, Hogan’s prose is pared down but deliberate, reflecting the staid resilience of her central characters. The narrative, while alarming, is very much grounded in the reality of the time and place in which it’s set. It’s clear that many women in similar situations never received answers about what happened to their children, but in this novel, Hogan does offer a hint of relief. Overall, it’s a narrative that builds slowly, hovering on a photograph as a missing piece in a puzzle, and coalescing in a resounding defense of women’s reproductive autonomy.

An elegantly written and damning narrative.

Kirkus Reviews