In an era when countless historical atrocities remain buried beneath layers of institutional silence, Women of a Promiscuous Nature by Donna Everhart excavates one of America’s most disturbing yet largely forgotten chapters. This meticulously researched novel exposes the American Plan, a government-sanctioned program that imprisoned thousands of women based solely on suspicion of immoral behavior between the 1910s and 1950s. What emerges is not merely a historical chronicle but a searing examination of power, autonomy, and the devastating consequences when the state claims dominion over women’s bodies.
The Architecture of Oppression
Everhart constructs her narrative through three distinct perspectives, each offering a window into different facets of institutional control. Ruth Foster enters the story as an independent working woman whose crime amounts to nothing more than living alone and walking to work. When Sheriff Wright intercepts her morning commute and forces her to undergo a humiliating examination, Ruth’s life transforms in an instant from self-sufficient freedom to involuntary confinement. Her voice carries the weight of educated indignation, the frustration of someone who understands her rights yet finds them utterly meaningless against the machinery of institutionalized suspicion.
The second perspective belongs to fifteen-year-old Stella Temple, whose placement at the State Industrial Farm Colony initially seems like salvation from an abusive home where her father has been violating her nightly. Yet Women of a Promiscuous Nature by Donna Everhart refuses simple narratives of rescue. Through Stella’s eyes, readers witness the insidious nature of benevolent tyranny as Superintendent Dorothy Baker molds the traumatized girl into a devoted disciple, even as the institution performs irreversible procedures that rob Stella of her reproductive future. The complexity here cuts deep because Stella genuinely believes the Colony has saved her, illustrating how victims of systemic abuse can internalize their oppression.
The Perpetrator as Human
Perhaps the novel’s most unsettling achievement lies in its treatment of Dorothy Baker, the superintendent who runs the Colony with unwavering conviction in her civilizing mission. Baker isn’t depicted as a monster but as a woman shaped by her own traumas and the prevailing ideology of her time. Scarred both physically from a childhood fire and emotionally from a failed marriage to an unfaithful husband, Baker channels her pain into creating what she genuinely believes to be a redemptive institution. Everhart’s willingness to humanize Baker without excusing her actions represents masterful character work that forces readers to grapple with uncomfortable questions about complicity, belief, and harm enacted in the name of social good.
Baker’s methods range from mandatory labor and invasive medical treatments to psychological manipulation and solitary confinement euphemistically termed “meditation.” She demands letters of commendation from inmates, weaponizing their own words to justify continued funding for an institution built on coercion. The superintendent’s relationship with Stella reveals the particular danger of paternalistic control disguised as mentorship, as Baker simultaneously destroys and claims to save the vulnerable girl.
Historical Weight and Literary Craft
Women of a Promiscuous Nature by Donna Everhart distinguishes itself through the depth of its historical research. The author’s note details how the discovery of Scott W. Stern’s “The Trials of Nina McCall” and Karin Zipf’s “Bad Girls at Samarcand” led Everhart down a research path that uncovered the systematic targeting, detention, and forced medical treatment of women across America. These weren’t isolated incidents but coordinated government policy, justified initially as venereal disease prevention during wartime but expanded into broad social control that ensnared women guilty of nothing beyond independence, poverty, or simply being in the wrong place at the wrong time.
The prose style matches the gravity of the subject matter. Everhart writes with restraint, allowing the horror of circumstances to speak for itself rather than relying on melodrama. Her sentences carry weight without ornamentation, echoing the stark reality faced by women who discovered their fundamental rights meant nothing against institutional authority. Dialogue reveals character through understatement and implication, particularly in exchanges between inmates who develop coded ways of sharing information under constant surveillance.
The Supporting Cast of Suffering
The tertiary characters populate the Colony with distinct voices and histories that prevent the narrative from feeling like a simple good-versus-evil morality play. Lucy Griffin, a repeat “offender” whose scarred face testifies to her syphilis treatments, embodies defiant resistance even as the system breaks her body. Opal and Sally, kitchen workers who’ve learned to navigate institutional demands, offer Ruth guidance born of hard-won survival wisdom. Frances Platt, initially dismissed as mentally deficient, becomes the novel’s most enigmatic figure whose ultimate act of arson destroys the dormitories and precipitates the Colony’s temporary closure.
These women weren’t prostitutes, though some were accused of being such. They were wives deemed unsatisfactory by husbands who wanted them “fixed,” young women who visited boyfriends at military camps, women who drank too much or lived independently or simply caught the eye of suspicious law enforcement. Women of a Promiscuous Nature by Donna Everhart demonstrates how vague accusations of “promiscuous nature” became sufficient grounds for imprisonment, forced medical treatment, and sterilization without trial, conviction, or due process.
Structural Tensions and Pacing
The novel unfolds across seven months, tracking Ruth’s journey from defiant newcomer to someone worn down by institutional grinding. Everhart structures the narrative to mirror this erosion, with early chapters pulsing with Ruth’s resistance gradually giving way to chapters where survival trumps protest. The pacing occasionally falters in the middle section as daily routines at the Colony repeat, though this repetition arguably serves thematic purpose by capturing the soul-crushing monotony of institutional life.
Some readers seeking faster plot development may find the deliberate pace challenging, particularly during extended sequences detailing work assignments, rule enforcement, and Baker’s administrative machinations. However, these sections establish the totalizing nature of the Colony’s control over every aspect of inmates’ lives, from their labor to their correspondence to their very thoughts.
Critical Considerations
While the novel succeeds brilliantly in exposing historical injustice and creating compelling characters, certain elements merit examination. The fire that ultimately destroys the dormitories feels somewhat convenient as a plot device, though Everhart bases this event on actual fires set at reform institutions including Samarcand Manor. Frances Platt’s transformation from apparently non-verbal to capable of complex arson strains credibility, even as it delivers emotional impact.
The ending, with Baker and Stella disappearing together to another facility while Ruth gains freedom, offers both resolution and frustration. Baker faces no real accountability for her actions, instead moving to a new position where she can continue her work. This lack of justice may anger some readers, yet it accurately reflects historical reality where superintendents like Baker rarely faced consequences for abuses committed under the banner of reform.
Literary Lineage and Comparisons
Women of a Promiscuous Nature by Donna Everhart joins a growing body of historical fiction excavating buried injustices against women. Readers who appreciated Lisa Wingate’s exploration of the Tennessee Children’s Home Society in “Before We Were Yours” will find similar themes of institutional harm cloaked in benevolent rhetoric. The novel shares thematic DNA with Margaret Atwood’s “The Handmaid’s Tale” in its examination of systematic control over women’s reproduction and sexuality, though Everhart’s work remains grounded in documented historical fact rather than speculative fiction.
Everhart’s previous novels including “The Education of Dixie Dupree” and “The Saints of Swallow Hill” demonstrate her consistent interest in Southern history and characters navigating difficult circumstances. This latest work represents perhaps her most ambitious and politically charged narrative, tackling subject matter with contemporary resonance regarding bodily autonomy and government overreach.
Resonance Beyond the Page
What makes this novel particularly unsettling is its contemporary relevance. The legal framework that enabled the American Plan hasn’t been entirely dismantled. As Everhart notes in her author’s statement, some of the same laws remain in effect today, raising urgent questions about state power over individual bodies. The novel illuminates how easily moral panic, public health concerns, and social control can merge into systems that primarily target women, the poor, and other marginalized groups.
The book arrives at a moment when debates over reproductive rights, bodily autonomy, and government authority rage across America. While Women of a Promiscuous Nature by Donna Everhart tells a mid-twentieth-century story, its warnings about institutional power masked as benevolent reform feel urgently present.
A Verdict on Impact
This novel succeeds as both literature and historical document. Everhart has crafted characters whose complexity honors the real women who suffered through the American Plan while creating a narrative compelling enough to reach readers who might never pick up a history text. The prose occasionally prioritizes clarity over beauty, and the pacing sometimes drags, but these represent minor limitations in a work tackling monumental subject matter.
Women of a Promiscuous Nature by Donna Everhart deserves recognition not merely for exposing forgotten history but for doing so with nuance that resists easy answers. It’s a novel that will provoke discussion, anger, and hopefully action toward ensuring such systematic abuses never recur. For readers willing to confront difficult truths about American history and persistent questions about power, control, and resistance, this book offers both illumination and profound discomfort—precisely what the best historical fiction should provide.
Books to Read If You Loved This Story
For Historical Injustice Against Women:
- “The Indoctrination of the American Girl” by Lisa Wingate
- “Orphan Train” by Christina Baker Kline
- “The Book of Lost Friends” by Lisa Wingate
For Institutional Horror and Resilience:
- “Girl, Interrupted” by Susanna Kaysen
- “One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest” by Ken Kesey
- “The Fever” by Megan Abbott
And for Southern Historical Fiction:
- “The Underground Railroad” by Colson Whitehead
- “The Book of Lost Names” by Kristin Harmel
- Other works by Donna Everhart including “The Education of Dixie Dupree” and “The Saints of Swallow Hill”