Title: The Lies We Told
Author: Ellen Marie Wiseman
Publisher: Kensington Books
Genre: Historical Fiction
Release Date: 29th July 2025
BLURB
In rural 1930s Virginia, a young immigrant mother fights for her dignity and those she loves against America’s rising eugenics movement – when widespread support for policies of prejudice drove imprisonment and forced sterilizations based on class, race, disability, education, and country of origin – in this tragic and uplifting novel of social injustice, survival, and hope for readers of Susan Meissner, Kristin Hannah, and Christina Baker Kline.
When Lena Conti—a young, unwed mother—sees immigrant families being forcibly separated on Ellis Island, she vows not to let the officers take her two-year old daughter. But the inspection process is more rigorous than she imagined, and she is separated from her mother and teenage brother, who are labeled burdens to society, denied entry, and deported back to Germany. Now, alone but determined to give her daughter a better life after years of living in poverty and near starvation, she finds herself facing a future unlike anything she had envisioned.
Silas Wolfe, a widowed family relative, reluctantly brings Lena and her daughter to his weathered cabin in Virginia’s Blue Ridge Mountains to care for his home and children. Though the hills around Wolfe Hollow remind Lena of her homeland, she struggles to adjust. Worse, she is stunned to learn the children in her care have been taught to hide when the sheriff comes around. As Lena meets their neighbors, she realizes the community is vibrant and tight knit, but also senses growing unease. The State of Virginia is scheming to paint them as ignorant, immoral, and backwards so they can evict them from their land, seize children from parents, and deal with those possessing “inferior genes.”
After a social worker from the Eugenics Office accuses Lena of promiscuity and feeblemindedness, her own worst fears come true. Sent to the Virginia State Colony for the Feebleminded and Epileptics, Lena face impossible choices in hopes of reuniting with her daughter—and protecting the people, and the land, she has grown to love.
REVIEW
The book cover attracted my eye, looking quite idyllic flowers and somewhat rustic looking house being in contract with the more sinister book title of “They Lies They Told” had me intrigued and eager to learn more. Though I didn’t realise at that stage that the book was actually based on real events.
The book begins with Katrina Conti, Enzo her son, Magdalena her daughter and Ella, Magdalenas 2year old toddler having just crossed via ship from Germany to America. A journey that has been difficult, uncomfortable and with little food to eat. Katrina and Enzo have had their ticket paid for by recently widowed Silas Wolfe, a distant cousin of Katrina’s. Katrina is to look after Silas Wolfe’s two children, Bonnie and Jack Henry along with “keeping house” whilst Enzo is to work at the saw mill with Silas and help him take care of the homestead. Katrina and her little family have saved up and paid for Magdalena and Ella’s tickets hoping that once Silas meets them, he will accept them onto his homestead and find a job for Magdalena too. Unfortunately, Magdalena’s “Mutti” Katarina has been really ill on the crossing, struck badly with seas sickness, at her age she hasn’t coped well at all but she is determined to do her best for her family so has endured everything thinking a better life is on the horizon for her and her little family. But Katarina isn’t aware that even once they have arrived in America they can be sent back if deemed “unfit” in anyway. The Conti family are not even treat as individuals they are forced to line up along with everyone else that came over on the ship, they are given a number Katarina No528, Enzo No529, Magdalena No527, even little Ella No526, then they are separated and sent to be examined physically and asked questions to assess their mental aptitude. Magdalena is asked extra questions about the fact she is an unmarried mother, she repeats what is considered the more palatable story of the era that she and her family have come up with that Ella’s father died before Ella was born, before they could get married. Rather than the truth that she was tricked by a British military officer whilst he was in Germany into having a relationship which led to her becoming pregnant, despite him promising to take her and their baby to meet his family, he disappeared one day and his colleagues told Magdalena he had returned to his wife and family in the UK! Magdalena had since then brought up her child Ella with the support of her “Mutti” Katarina and her younger brother Enzo who both dote on Ella. Both Magdalena and Ella are measured, eyes tested and retested when it is thought that Magdalena may have an hereditary eye condition but are eventually passed for entry into America.
Enzo is deemed feeble minded and denied entry, even when Magdalena argues he is now slow he simply doesn’t understand as much American language as she does. Katarina is to be denied entry as they cannot send Enzo home on his own as at 14years old without an appropriate adult. When Magdalena learns that her mother and brother have been denied entry to America, she begs to see them before they are returned to Germany on the next available ship. Both Katarina & Enzo insist that Magdalen should stay in America and meet distant cousin Silas, explain the situation and do the job that Katarina was going to be doing, caring for the children and the home. It’s an emotional, sad goodbye but Magdalena eventually agrees when Katarina and Enzo promise to attempt to come back over to America as soon as they can.
The emotional turmoil is one hurdle that Magdalena had to deal with, now she must travel to the delousing area before she can finally go to meet Silas Wolfe. Refusal at any stage of any of the delousing stages mean being sent back to Germany on the next available ship. The delousing process is equally embarrassing, degrading and dehumanising. The men and women are at least separated but that is the only concession to dignity given. They are forced to leave their meagre luggage behind to be treated, then told to strip naked and are herded into a stone chamber with shower heads dangling from the ceilings. They are told it is a “shower”, they are then closed in and the delousing shower begins. Magdalena holds a terrified Ella whilst every bit of hair on their bodies is also given an additional delousing treatment. They are told at every stage that all the different interviews, physicals and even the delousing treatment is because they do not want any germs, illnesses, or hereditary illnesses being brought into America. America doesn’t want ill or feeble minded people they only want strong fit people who can work and support themselves and be productive for America.
Once Silas gets over his initial surprise at collecting a young woman with a baby rather than a older woman and her son he sets off back to his homestead with his distantly related family members. Both Bonnie and Jack Henry are wary of Lena and are reluctant to accept her fully into the family but with the appeal of baby Ella, Bonnie and Jack Henry are eventually won over. It’s not long before Lena discovers all is not well in the area the homestead is in with the state wanting the land the Wolfe family and their neighbours live on. Some of the land has been in the families for generations, but the state is determined to get what they want which is the land whilst paying as little as possible to the families. Silas has a list of rules/instructions, should anyone come to their home whilst he is not there they are to hide, this now includes Lena and Ella. Lena thinks that perhaps Silas is over reacting but if she wants to stay she is warned she must keep to his rules.
It soon becomes apparent that the state will use any misdemeanour or perceived negative to part the families from their land. One of the main narratives the state uses is that the families living out on the wilderness land are ignorant, feeble minded, promiscuous and interbred!
One of the tricks the state uses is sending people out to photograph the people and their children. The photographer insists they are just wanting to show the people in their natural routines but soon has them all in bare feet and posing to further the perception that the people are simple, don’t even wear shoes and let their children run wild. Authority figures from the state and the sheriff start sneaking up to the Wolfe home, aware that if their vehicles are heard no one can be found they begin to get sneakier using horses, parking up and walking. They ask questions, warning if they are not answered there will be negative consequence. So tricked into answering the Wolfe family along with other families though they do not welcome these intruders they answer enough questions to get rid of them from their properties. Silas knows it is only a matter of time before they come for his farm and he knows children are being taken away from families, snatched away and being put up for adoption with “more suitable families.” Perhaps if he had shared all he knew with Lena she could have been more prepared for the tricks being used against them. There are many “clos calls” where Silas manages to ward off the authorities but one day he is not there and Bonnie, Jack Henry are both snatched from Lena and put in a van. Lena argues for their immediate release as she is a responsible adult and is caring for them in their father’s absence. Lena is shocked further when she finds herself arrested for apparently having incestuous relations with Silas! And the now toddler Ella is snatched from her arms to be taken along with Bonnie and Jack Henry to a “more suitable family/home” where they will be raised properly, educated and become better more productive citizens of America!
Lena is taken to an institution where women are literally locked away and forgotten about. She is given a stark choice, stay locked away forever or say yes to being sterilised and maybe get out. There is no good option for Lena, but she thinks of Ella, Bonnie and Jack Henry and how they need her to be fighting to get them back and reluctantly says yes to the sterilisation. After the operation she is put to work in the institution before finally being abruptly released.
Lena returns to the Wolfe home but without the children, Silas has no will to live, he has tried to find his children but no one will help him or the other families affected. Silas has accepted that one day soon the state will come for they only thing he has left, his land. They do and as he always said Silas doesn’t go down without a fight and when he does eventually “go down” it is on his own terms. Lena asked about the Bonnie, Jack Henry and Ella but is continually told they are better off where they are and will never be returned. After the state claim the Wolfe land and burn the house and barn down to the ground Lena is fortunately taken in by relatives of Silas and she does make a life for herself though always looks around at strangers faces hoping to see Ella.
I was equally shocked and horrified that though this book is historical fiction it is actually based on real lives. The people in this book were based on real people who were treat as inferior beings. Were first stripped of any rights they had, then their children were taken too. I cannot imagine how devastated they must have felt. The fact the people knew what was happening when children started to be taken and “going missing” yet knew there was nothing they could do but hope the knock on the door for them wouldn’t come is insufferable.
In this book we are given a mixture of endings for those involved, from suicide to enduring and rebuilding a life. I would imagine those rebuilding and perhaps being reunited with their children were very few, but understand the author wanting a more uplifting ending to the book which I thoroughly enjoyed but didn’t miss the point that a happy ending was not had by all.
I loved the characters of Katarina and Enzo who despite being sent back to an uncertain future insisted that Magdalena stay in America to have a better future with Ella. I immediately took to the characters of Bonnie and Jack Henry. Bonnie initially hostile towards this strange young woman whom she thinks is trying to take her mother’s place. When Bonnie clearly becomes attached to Ella, Lena cleverly encourages the interactions and asks for Bonnies help and instruction rather than just trying to take over the Wolfe home.
I couldn’t help but admire Silas Wolfe, he tried his best for his family, he generously sent money to a distant cousin who needed help. Then when he didn’t get what he’d paid for, though surly about it to begin with he decided to make the best of the situation with Lena and Ella accepting them into his home. Silas was still dealing with the loss of his wife and child in childbirth, he got help caring for his children and home knowing the state did not look favourably on a widowed male with children. Then the state still came and snatched his children, shattering his already fractured heart and finally they took his land, the land that had been lived on by generations of Wolfe’s and was the burial place of his wife. Sadly, Silas Wolfe did not have the happy resolution that Lena is given years later in the book. I feel like I could talk forever about the detailed plot and the injustices that occur but am aware of trying not to give too much away.
The book gave me shivers, firstly with the irony and similarities in treatment of the German immigrants being stripped of clothes, possession’s, being physically measured against a certain set of ideals etc, and secondly the description of the delousing chamber being so like those facilities that the German Nazis put the Jews through. Some being murdered in them, others being put to work until they died or were liberated.
Then I became angry why do governments, organisations & institutions think they know best, that they can call someone an imbecile or feebleminded or a young woman immoral & promiscuous as she is an unwed mother? Why during different periods of history do they think they have the authority to sterilise women whom they deem unfit simply because they are unwed or other nonsensical reasons? Why should one race or group of people think themselves superior to another? What or Who within the state authorities decided that it was right to tear families apart, sterilise women, young girls & boys who they thought unfit to procreate? The state was determined these people would be deprived of everything they held dear as by burning down their homes, they had nothing left and nowhere to live. Even if those wrongly placed into institutions ever escaped these institution’s they would have no home to go back to.
Then there were the children, scared at being snatched from the life they knew, the people they loved bewildered as to why they had to go to new families and homes, asking why they couldn’t just go home? The state the lied to them, telling children lies, telling them that their parents had given them away because they were not wanted, or that their parents were unfit to look after them because they were drunks or criminals or that mother were promiscuous or that families were incestuous! The lies were extreme and unfortunately the children having no other reason to be taken away from their families and homes believed them.
My immediate thought upon finishing the book were that it was an intriguing, eye-opening, heartbreaking and thought provoking read!
Summing up this book is not just a work of fiction but the passing on of the truth and horror stories of not so distance past.
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