Take My Hand

Take My Hand
By Dolen Perkins-Valdez
Penguin Random House, 2022. 359 pages. Historical Fiction

"History repeats what we don't remember." Inspired by true events, this novel is about a Black nurse in post-segregation Alabama who blows the whistle on a terrible wrong done to her patients. At the Montgomery Family Planning Clinic, Civil Townsend is fresh out of nursing school and plans to help women make their own choices for their lives and bodies. But when her first week on the job takes her down a dusty country road to a worn-down one-room cabin, she's shocked to learn that her new patients, India and Erica, are children: eleven and thirteen years old. Civil is supposed to be giving these girls birth control shots, even though neither of the sisters has even kissed a boy. She's shocked to learn that the girls are victims of the system handling the family's welfare benefits and because the girls are poor and Black, the system has decided the girls should be on birth control. As Civil grapples with her role, she takes India, Erica, and their family into her heart. One day, she arrives at their door and the unthinkable has happened, and nothing will ever be the same for any of them.

This book kept me thinking about the characters and their situations long after I put it down. I recommend this book for anyone who wants to learn more about our country's difficult history with medical abuses, including involuntary surgical sterilizations. It's an exceptional read that led me down a path of research about the true story of the two sisters that inspired it: Mary Alice and Minni Lee Relf. I wholeheartedly recommend.

If you like Take My Hand, you might also like: 

Only the Beautiful
By Susan Meissner
New York: Berkley, 2023. 386 pages. Fiction

In Austria, during World War II, sixteen-year-old Rosanne is orphaned by an accident and she must navigate a new life with the Calvert family in California. Treated as a new member of the household staff instead of an honorary family member, she hides her grief and her synesthesia, which is an ability to see colors in words. When a pregnancy is revealed, she's sent to a home for the "unwanted:" people with mental illness and disabilities. Richly drawn characters and heartbreaking, historically accurate situations combine to make a powerful reading experience that brings the subject of eugenics into a loving home.

The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks
By Rebecca Skloot
Crown Publishers, 2010. 369 pages. Biography

First written about on our blog in 2011, this nonfiction book about a woman whose cancerous cells have been used without her permission for over seventy years in some of the biggest scientific discoveries, will both intrigue you and anger you. You will fall in love with Henrietta's family and want to see them given the recognition they deserve. The author narrates the science in an easy-to-understand way, tracks the racial politics of medicine thoughtfully, and tells the Lacks family's often painful history with grace.

LKA