Perkins-Valdez, Dolen,

Take my hand / Dolen Perkins-Valdez. - 359 pages ; 24 cm.

First published in the United States by Berkley, an imprint of Penguin Random House LLC.

Montgomery, Alabama. 1973. Fresh out of nursing school, Civil Townsend has big plans to make a difference in her community. At the Montgomery Family Planning Clinic, she intends 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 tumbledown cabin, she’s surprised to find that her new patients are just eleven and thirteen years old. Neither of the Williams sisters has even kissed a boy, but they are poor and Black, and for those handling their welfare benefits, that’s reason enough to have the girls on birth control. As Civil grapples with her new responsibilities, she takes India and Erica into her heart and comes to care for their family as though they were her own. But one day she arrives at their door to discover the unthinkable has happened, and nothing will ever be the same.

9781474622684 9781474622677


Reproductive rights--History--United States--20th century--Fiction.
Nurses--Alabama--Fiction.
African American women--Alabama--Fiction.
Involuntary sterilization--Fiction.
Eugenics--United States--Fiction.


Alabama--Race relations--20th century--Fiction.


Social problem fiction.

813.6