Author: Meagan Church
Published: March 28, 2023 by Sourcebooks Landmark
Format: Hardcover, 320 Pages
Genre: Literary Fiction
First Sentence: The last time Daddy and I stood at the ocean’s edge together, there had been a storm most of the day.
Blurb: For fourteen-year-old Leah Payne, life in her beloved coastal Carolina town is as simple as it is free. Devoted to her lumberjack father and running through the wilds where the forest meets the shore, Leah's country life is as natural as the Loblolly pines that rise to greet the Southern sky.
When an accident takes her father's life, Leah is wrenched from her small community and cast into a family of strangers with a terrible secret. Separated from her only home, Leah is kept apart from the family and forced to act as a helpmate for the well-to-do household. When a moment of violence and prejudice thrusts Leah into the center of the state's shameful darkness, she must fight for her own future against a world that doesn't always value the wild spirit of a Carolina girl.
Set in 1935 against the very real backdrop of a recently formed state eugenics board, The Last Carolina Girl is a powerful and heart-wrenching story of fierce strength, forgotten history, autonomy, and the places and people we ultimately call home. (GoodReads)
My Opinion: Set in 1935, North Carolina tells a heartbreaking and redemptive story of Leah Payne, whose hard life with her father after her mother’s death changes in an instant when the only person who has always been there for her is suddenly killed in a storm.
When the family next door can’t take her in, Leah is placed in the foster system. That was the first lie; the family didn’t want a child, they wanted a help mate. A person that didn’t need to be educated or treated with dignity. But that is not all to their story; there is a stunning twist at the end that the reader could not see coming.
As heartbreaking as this story is, it is also redemptive. It has its disgustingly cruel and biased parts with eugenics and taking away a person’s rights. But what they can’t take away are Leah’s dreams. Dreams that she was told were too big for someone like her.
I couldn’t put this gripping book down and look away from Leah’s life. The strength of Leah and what she is willing to do and accept will stay with the reader long after the final page is turned.
Blurb: For fourteen-year-old Leah Payne, life in her beloved coastal Carolina town is as simple as it is free. Devoted to her lumberjack father and running through the wilds where the forest meets the shore, Leah's country life is as natural as the Loblolly pines that rise to greet the Southern sky.
When an accident takes her father's life, Leah is wrenched from her small community and cast into a family of strangers with a terrible secret. Separated from her only home, Leah is kept apart from the family and forced to act as a helpmate for the well-to-do household. When a moment of violence and prejudice thrusts Leah into the center of the state's shameful darkness, she must fight for her own future against a world that doesn't always value the wild spirit of a Carolina girl.
Set in 1935 against the very real backdrop of a recently formed state eugenics board, The Last Carolina Girl is a powerful and heart-wrenching story of fierce strength, forgotten history, autonomy, and the places and people we ultimately call home. (GoodReads)
My Opinion: Set in 1935, North Carolina tells a heartbreaking and redemptive story of Leah Payne, whose hard life with her father after her mother’s death changes in an instant when the only person who has always been there for her is suddenly killed in a storm.
When the family next door can’t take her in, Leah is placed in the foster system. That was the first lie; the family didn’t want a child, they wanted a help mate. A person that didn’t need to be educated or treated with dignity. But that is not all to their story; there is a stunning twist at the end that the reader could not see coming.
As heartbreaking as this story is, it is also redemptive. It has its disgustingly cruel and biased parts with eugenics and taking away a person’s rights. But what they can’t take away are Leah’s dreams. Dreams that she was told were too big for someone like her.
I couldn’t put this gripping book down and look away from Leah’s life. The strength of Leah and what she is willing to do and accept will stay with the reader long after the final page is turned.
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