Ellen Marie Wiseman’s latest historical fiction masterpiece, The Lies They Told, arrives like a gut punch wrapped in beautiful prose—a devastating exploration of America’s eugenics movement that forces readers to confront one of the nation’s most shameful chapters. Set against the backdrop of 1930s Virginia, this novel transforms what could have been a simple tale of immigrant struggle into a complex meditation on power, prejudice, and the resilience of the human spirit.
The story follows Lena Conti, a young German immigrant mother whose dreams of American prosperity crumble when she encounters the brutal machinery of state-sanctioned persecution. What begins as a hopeful journey to Virginia’s Blue Ridge Mountains becomes a nightmare of family separation, forced sterilization, and systematic dehumanization that will leave readers both heartbroken and outraged.
The Architecture of Oppression: Plot and Themes
Wiseman constructs her narrative with the precision of a master craftsman, weaving together multiple historical atrocities—Ellis Island inspections, the displacement of Blue Ridge Mountain families for Shenandoah National Park, and Virginia’s eugenics program—into a cohesive indictment of institutional racism and classism. The plot unfolds with inexorable logic: each seemingly small injustice builds toward the catastrophic moment when Lena loses everything she holds dear.
The author’s decision to focus on the intersection of these three historical events proves brilliant. Rather than simply dramatizing one aspect of American persecution, Wiseman shows how prejudice operates systematically across different institutions and populations. The Ellis Island sequences, where families are brutally separated based on arbitrary assessments of “fitness,” establish the novel’s central theme: the weaponization of supposed scientific authority to justify cruelty.
When Lena arrives in Wolfe Hollow to work for the widowed Silas Wolfe and care for his children Bonnie and Jack Henry, the narrative shifts from immigration horror to rural Gothic. The mountain community becomes both sanctuary and trap—a place where Lena finds temporary peace while sinister forces gather to destroy it. Wiseman’s portrayal of the tight-knit mountain community challenges stereotypes while acknowledging the real vulnerabilities that made these families targets for exploitation.
The eugenic persecution that forms the novel’s climax feels both inevitable and shocking. Wiseman doesn’t shy away from the medical horrors of forced sterilization, but she also captures the psychological devastation of mothers separated from children, of communities torn apart by pseudo-scientific racism. The scenes in the Virginia State Colony for Epileptics and Feebleminded rank among the most powerful and disturbing in contemporary historical fiction.
Character Development: The Strength Within Suffering
Lena Conti emerges as one of Wiseman’s most compelling protagonists—a woman whose determination to protect her daughter Ella drives every decision, even when those decisions lead to unbearable consequences. Wiseman avoids the trap of making Lena either purely victimized or impossibly heroic. Instead, she crafts a character whose mistakes feel human and whose courage develops gradually through mounting adversity.
The relationship between Lena and the Wolfe children—particularly the fierce, protective Bonnie—provides the novel’s emotional core. Wiseman excels at writing children who feel authentically young while bearing adult responsibilities. Bonnie’s eventual revelation that she, too, was sterilized as a child delivers one of the book’s most devastating moments, handled with sensitivity that honors both the character’s strength and the historical reality of such atrocities.
Silas Wolfe represents perhaps the novel’s most complex character study. Initially appearing as a stern, difficult man, he gradually reveals depths of grief and protective love that make his eventual breakdown both tragic and believable. Wiseman’s portrayal of his alcoholic despair after losing his children avoids both condemnation and sentimentality, instead presenting alcoholism as one of many ways people try to cope with unbearable loss.
The antagonists—social worker Miriam Sizer, college researcher Penelope Rodgers, and the various doctors and officials—could have easily become one-dimensional villains. Instead, Wiseman presents them as true believers in their cause, making their cruelty more chilling because it stems from genuine conviction rather than mere sadism.
Literary Craft: Beauty Amid Brutality
Wiseman’s prose style has matured significantly from her earlier works. While novels like The Plum Tree and What She Left Behind sometimes struggled with pacing, The Lies They Told maintains momentum throughout its 400+ pages. The author’s descriptive passages of Blue Ridge Mountain life are particularly effective, creating a sense of place so vivid that readers can almost smell the mountain laurel and hear the creek water.
The dialogue deserves special praise. Wiseman captures the distinct speech patterns of 1930s mountain communities without resorting to stereotypical dialect that might alienate modern readers. Lena’s gradual improvement in English provides a subtle marker of time passage while highlighting her intelligence—a direct rebuke to the officials who label her “feebleminded.”
However, the novel occasionally suffers from heavy-handed symbolism. The repeated imagery of birds in cages, while thematically appropriate, sometimes feels forced. Additionally, certain secondary characters remain underdeveloped, particularly some of the mountain community members who could have provided richer context for the social dynamics at play.
Historical Authority: Research Meets Responsibility
Wiseman’s research credentials shine throughout the novel. Her author’s note reveals extensive consultation with historical documents, memoirs, and scholarly works about American eugenics. The inclusion of real figures like Carrie Buck (the plaintiff in the landmark Buck v. Bell Supreme Court case) and photographer Arthur Rothstein grounds the fictional narrative in documented history.
The attention to historical detail extends beyond major events to everyday particulars: the delousing procedures at Ellis Island, the specific techniques used in forced sterilizations, the bureaucratic language employed to justify atrocities. These details accumulate to create an atmosphere of authenticity that makes the novel’s horrors feel immediate and real.
Perhaps most importantly, Wiseman’s contemporary author’s note connecting these historical injustices to modern ICE detention center sterilizations prevents the novel from feeling like distant history. This connection transforms The Lies They Told from period piece to urgent contemporary warning.
Critical Evaluation: Strengths and Limitations
The novel’s greatest strength lies in its unflinching commitment to historical truth. Wiseman refuses to soften the edges of her story or provide false comfort. The sterilization scenes, while difficult to read, honor the experiences of real victims by treating their suffering with appropriate gravity.
The pacing represents another significant achievement. Despite covering nearly two years of story time, the novel never feels rushed or overstuffed. Wiseman allows relationships to develop naturally and gives proper weight to both quiet domestic moments and explosive confrontations.
However, the novel’s scope sometimes works against it. While the connections between immigration persecution, land seizure, and eugenics are historically accurate and thematically rich, the sheer number of injustices occasionally overwhelms the narrative. Some readers may find the relentless accumulation of cruelties emotionally exhausting rather than enlightening.
The resolution, while ultimately hopeful, strains credibility. Lena’s reunion with Ella feels somewhat rushed after the careful buildup of earlier sections. The novel’s final chapters, though emotionally satisfying, don’t fully address the psychological trauma that would realistically follow such experiences.
Comparative Context: Standing Among Peers
Within Wiseman’s body of work, The Lies They Told represents both continuity and growth. Like The Lost Girls of Willowbrook and The Orphan Collector, it examines institutional abuse of vulnerable populations. However, this latest novel demonstrates greater narrative sophistication and more nuanced character development than her earlier efforts.
In the broader landscape of historical fiction dealing with American social injustice, The Lies They Told deserves comparison with works like The Book of Lost Names by Kristin Harmel and The Seven Husbands of Evelyn Hugo by Taylor Jenkins Reid. While those novels explore different aspects of 20th-century persecution, all three share a commitment to illuminating forgotten voices and hidden histories.
Readers who appreciate authors like Susan Meissner, whose The Last Year of the War explores Japanese American internment, or Christina Baker Kline’s examination of Depression-era hardships in Orphan Train, will find familiar territory in Wiseman’s latest offering. However, The Lies They Told distinguishes itself through its multi-layered approach to oppression and its unflinching examination of medical abuse.
Final Assessment: Essential Reading Despite Flaws
The Lies They Told succeeds as both gripping historical fiction and important social commentary. While the novel occasionally stumbles under the weight of its own ambitions, its core achievement—making visible the forgotten victims of American eugenics—cannot be overstated.
Wiseman’s commitment to historical accuracy serves the story well, even when that accuracy makes for difficult reading. The novel’s exploration of how ordinary people become complicit in systematic oppression feels particularly relevant in contemporary political contexts, though Wiseman wisely avoids heavy-handed parallels.
The book’s emotional impact lingers long after the final page. Readers will find themselves thinking about Lena’s struggle days later, perhaps researching the real history that inspired the fiction. In an era when historical education often glosses over America’s darkest chapters, novels like The Lies They Told perform essential cultural work.
For readers seeking historical fiction that challenges as well as entertains, The Lies They Told delivers powerfully. While it may not achieve the technical perfection of genre classics, its moral urgency and emotional authenticity make it essential reading for anyone interested in understanding how the past continues to shape the present.
Similar Books Worth Reading
Readers who appreciate The Lies They Told should consider these companion works:
- War Against the Weak by Edwin Black – The definitive nonfiction account of American eugenics
- The Book Thief by Markus Zusak – Another perspective on how ordinary people survive systematic persecution
- The Invisible Bridge by Julie Orringer – Explores family separation and survival during wartime
- Orphan Train by Christina Baker Kline – Examines institutional treatment of vulnerable children
- The Nightingale by Kristin Hannah – Features strong female characters facing impossible choices
- The Alice Network by Kate Quinn – Historical fiction highlighting women’s resilience against oppression
The Lies They Told stands as Ellen Marie Wiseman’s most ambitious and successful novel to date—a painful but necessary reminder that the price of freedom often includes remembering what we’d rather forget.