Ann Leary

Hildy is a tough character. On the one hand, she is witty and talented. She is caring, knowledgeable and not afraid of hard work. When she is sober, she is an admirable lady that one would be proud to have as a mother or friend. Unfortunately, it is her neediness that is painful to witness because she is the type of woman who thrives in the company of others. Watching her slide downward into old patterns, the very same patterns that forced her daughters to send her rehab in the first place, show more is bittersweet, especially when it is so easily avoidable. At the same time, one wants to condemn her because she is ultimately responsible for her own actions, and her continuous justifications for her behavior become disturbing.

All of Hildy’s problems stem from her loneliness. Her embarrassment over past actions, her loneliness, her struggling business, her friendship with Rebecca and strained relationships with the rest of her hometown are all caused by her drinking. The Good House excels at showing how detrimental alcoholism is to every facet of a person’s life. It also shows just how easy it is for one to slip into a cycle of self-pity caused by drinking caused by self-pity and so forth. Hildy does not intend for her behavior to cause so many problems, but they do because she is stuck in a pattern from which she cannot break free. That she is an ultimately good person with plenty to offer society and no ill will towards others strikes a chord with readers because she makes it easy to imagine something similar happening to other loved ones.

The Good House is simultaneously intense and funny and horrifying. Hildy means well, but her denial about the true extent of her alcoholism is terrifying. Her downward spiral into the world of blackouts and lost time is made even scarier by her inability to recognize her harmful behavior and her willingness to get behind the wheel. At the same time, the fact that Hildy seeks solace from her loneliness and her work-related problems via a bottle is something to which a large number of readers can relate. One cannot condone her behavior but can understand how such extreme behavior starts. Meanwhile, her burgeoning relationship with Frank is hilariously sweet. The Good House proves that one is never too old to find love or to start again as many times as necessary. show less

The author of this book can’t have many nice things to say about the American Dream and how it was constructed for anybody but whites in a society of conformity and obedience at the turn of the 20th century.

In this story a young woman comes of age to discover that her benefactors operate a grizzly factory for exploiting female labour for “the public good.” It is based on the very real history of asylums for non-conforming women, women considered “feebleminded” by eugenicists and show more sanctioned by male-dominated institutions.

At a time when the first fruit of economic success, suburban growth, public health, and scientific breakthroughs were easing the difficult life of women, America found a way to punish the non-conformists.

Unlike the native populations they had wiped out, unlike the blacks they chained to ignorance and poverty, and unlike the immigrants who fed the belching factories of Pittsburgh and mines of the west, women were given the vote and in this interpretation, a Pyrrhic victory.

Many women who didn’t conform were sent to institutions catering to theories of white supremacy, essentially eugenics labs for the unfortunate.

This story indicts white society as complicit in Jim Crow, in the tyranny of men over women’s lives, and of long discredited scientific principles.

This story really is about a terrible chapter in American medicine, but in the context of the time, not a terribly unique one for the American experiment.

It is worth remembering that the same as the events in this story, Southern legislators were finding ways to entrap black youth in a prison system to benefit white businesses.

This was America at the frontier.

Worse still, and although it us not part of this story, there is plenty of evidence to believe that Germany’s Nazis used American methods as a template for their own racial purification campaigns. show less

Women have long had little control over their own bodies and lives. This is both true historically and even up to today, despite what we have already overcome. Ann Leary's disturbing and horrifying, but ultimately captivating, Prohibition-era historical fiction, The Foundling, based on her own grandmother's experiences, shows how little autonomy women had historically through the horrors of eugenics.

Although Mary Engel's father is alive, she was raised in an orphanage until the age of 12 show more when her father reclaimed her and dropped her off, unwanted and unwelcome, at her aunt's house. It's 1927 and Mary is attending stenography school when she meets Dr. Agnes Vogel, a respected psychiatrist, one of the few women in her profession, and a hero of Mary's. Dr. Vogel invites Mary to become her secretary at the remote Nettleton State Village for Feebleminded Women of Childbearing Age. Initially Mary believes that the women held at the asylum are of limited mental capacity and that their incarceration at Nettleton is a kindness to them. Then she recognizes a woman who was raised in the same orphanage Mary was, a woman who is most emphatically not "mentally incompetent." As she looks further into Lillian's situation, she unwittingly uncovers the truth about the troubling institute and the doctor at its head. Will she turn a blind eye or will she stand up for the voiceless women, trapped in a mental institution with no hope of release and suffering terrible abuse and cruelty?

The history and practice of eugenics is a shameful one in our history. It is a moral failure of gigantic proportions that required complicity and compliance from too many people. In Mary, Leary has created an initially naïve character who must look to herself and find her moral center before she can acknowledge the great wrong going on around her. She gains strength as the novel goes on and learns to see the complex layers of those around her and to acknowledge the ways in which society has failed, or chosen to punish, women who do not conform to the accepted norms, especially the young women incarcerated in the asylum because their husbands or fathers didn't approve of their behavior. The story itself is dramatic and action packed and Leary manages to weave a recognition of the grievous wrongs of not only eugenics but also racism and anti-Semitism into Mary's moral awakening. Readers will want to race to the end to see what happens to each of the characters in this twisting and surprising novel.

This book is one of the Women's National Book Association's 2022 Great Group Reads. show less

The Foundling by Ann Leary is a 2022 S&S/ Marysue Rucci Books publication.

This story is both horrifying and inspiring.

Set in the 1920s, the study of Eugenics in full swing, Mary, who spent her formative years in a Catholic orphanage before her aunt took her in, is a naïve young woman who is beyond grateful to find a job that will get her away from her aunt and give her a sense of independence.

She accepts a typist/secretarial position at 'The Nettleton State Village for Feeble-minded show more Women of Childbearing Age'- working for the highly respected Dr. Agnes Vogel, whom Mary all but worships.

As fate would have it, Mary soon recognizes one of the inmates- a girl she knew at the orphanage as a child. The girl she knew was not at all feeble-minded. But Mary doesn’t dare tell anyone for fear of being fired.

The longer Mary works under Dr. Vogel, she begins to notice some unlawful and unethical practices at the institute, but again, she keeps quiet. It wasn’t until her old friend asks to meet her and Mary meets a journalist who helps pull the wool from her eyes, that Mary begins to realize the esteemed Dr. Vogel is, in fact, a monster- one she must take steps to expose…

Whew! This book was intense. The subject matter alone is one that should make the hairs stand up on the back your neck- but the author sets the stage for one riveting, nail biting, edge of your seat drama. I couldn’t turn the pages fast enough!
While this topic will make you squirm in your seat, shocked at how the popularity of eugenics was so widespread and supported! The author handles this through the book’s characters, without being heavy handed, which also allows the characters to develop, grow and strengthen. While the story is about a shameful period in our history, it is just as much about having the courage of one’s convictions.

Overall, I thought the story was well-balanced, getting the point across, but also giving the reader a rewarding story with a lovely, but strong conclusion. Well done! show less