Women of a Promiscuous Nature with Donna Everhart and Scott Stern

Join author Donna Everhart, in conversation with scholar Scott Stern, on her latest novel, Women of a Promiscuous Nature. Accused of “promiscuity" in 1940s North Carolina, a young woman unjustly incarcerated and subjected to involuntary medical treatment at The State Industrial Farm Colony for Women decides to fight back in this powerful, shockingly timely novel based on the long-buried history of the American Plan, the government program designed to regulate women's bodies and sexuality throughout the first half of the 20th century.

Though Ruth Foster has never shared more than a chaste kiss with a man, she is one of dozens of women held at the Colony. Superintendent Dorothy Baker, convinced that she's transforming degenerate souls into upstanding members of society, oversees the women's medical treatment and “training" until they're deemed ready for parole. But some refuse to be cowed. Against Mrs. Baker's dogged efforts and the punishing weight of authority, Ruth and other inmates find ways to fight back, resolved to regain their freedom at any cost…

“Both a cautionary tale and a deeply compassionate rendering of women wrongly imprisoned in a system designed to break them, Donna Everhart’s propulsive story is filled with injustice, intrigue, and the determination to fight back.” —Lisa Wingate, #1 New York Times bestselling author of Shelterwood

About the Authors

is a USA Today bestselling author known for vividly evoking challenges of the heart and the complex heritage of the American South in her acclaimed novels When the Jessamine Grows, The Saints of Swallow Hill, The Moonshiner's Daughter, The Forgiving Kind, The Road to Bittersweet, and The Education of Dixie Dupree. She is the recipient of the prestigious North Carolina Society of Historians Award of Excellence, the SELA Outstanding Southeastern Author Award from the Southeastern Library Association, and her novels have received a SIBA Okra Pick, an Indie Next Pick, and two Publishers Marketplace Buzz Books selections. 

is a scholar and public interest lawyer. His first nonfiction book, was a New York Times editor’s choice selection, a Boston Globe best book of the year, and has been optioned for feature film. His popular writing has appeared in the New York Review of Books, The New Republic, Washington Post, The Atlantic, and the Los Angeles Review of Books, among other places. His latest book, (co-written with Charles O'Malley) is forthcoming from W.W. Norton.

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