The chilling opening of Women of a Promiscuous Nature by Donna Everhart begins on an ordinary morning in 1940s North Carolina. Ruth Foster walks to work, expecting nothing more than another shift at the diner. Instead, she finds herself ensnared in a nightmarish bureaucratic trap—forcibly examined, diagnosed with an infection she doesn’t have, and imprisoned without trial in a facility masquerading as benevolent reform. This jarring displacement from mundane routine to Kafkaesque detention sets the tone for Everhart’s unflinching exploration of the American Plan, a largely forgotten chapter of state-sanctioned control over women’s bodies and sexuality.
The Architecture of Institutional Cruelty
Everhart constructs her narrative around three distinct voices, each offering a different perspective on the State Industrial Farm Colony for Women in Kinston. Ruth Foster embodies righteous resistance—a young woman whose independence becomes evidence of moral failing in the eyes of 1940s patriarchal society. Fifteen-year-old Stella Temple arrives pregnant from abuse, initially viewing the Colony as salvation from her nightmarish home life. Most unsettling is Dorothy Baker, the superintendent whose genuine conviction in her “reform” mission makes her more dangerous than any cartoonish villain could be.
The genius of Women of a Promiscuous Nature by Donna Everhart lies in its refusal to simplify. Baker isn’t written as a monster; she’s a true believer shaped by her own trauma and the pseudoscientific certitudes of her era. Everhart reveals Baker’s backstory strategically, showing how a catastrophic childhood incident and limited opportunities for educated women channeled her ambitions into institutionalized control. This nuanced characterization forces readers to confront uncomfortable truths about how ordinary people perpetuate extraordinary harm while believing themselves righteous.
The Procedural Precision of Oppression
One of the novel’s greatest strengths is its meticulous documentation of institutional mechanisms. Everhart doesn’t merely tell us the Colony is oppressive; she shows us the handbook of rules, the demerit system, the “meditation rooms” (solitary confinement by another name), and the euphemistically named “group punishment.” The author’s procedural approach—detailing intake exams, treatment protocols, work assignments, and surveillance techniques—creates a suffocating authenticity. Readers experience the grinding monotony of institutional life, where every moment is regimented and resistance carries brutal consequences.
The medical treatments depicted are particularly harrowing. Women receive painful injections of Neosalvarsan—arsenic and mercury compounds that cause nausea, hair loss, and debilitating side effects—often for infections they never had. This historical accuracy grounds the narrative in documented reality, making the injustices feel immediate rather than safely distant.
Where Conviction Meets Complexity
The relationship between Stella and Baker forms the novel’s moral crucible. Stella, desperate for validation and stability after years of abuse, initially embraces Baker’s attention and the structure of institutional life. Baker recognizes Stella’s intelligence and begins grooming her for a “Reformed to Reformer” program—a chilling vision of victims becoming perpetuators. This dynamic brilliantly illustrates how systems of oppression recruit their victims, offering just enough belonging and purpose to obscure the fundamental violence of the arrangement.
However, the novel occasionally falters in its pacing. The middle section, where institutional routines are established and characters settle into patterns, can feel repetitive. While this monotony arguably serves the narrative—reflecting the numbing sameness of institutionalized life—some readers may find the deliberate pacing tests their patience. The repetition serves thematic purpose, but doesn’t always serve dramatic tension.
The Complicity of Silence
Women of a Promiscuous Nature by Donna Everhart excels in depicting how injustice requires layers of complicity. Dr. Graham administers treatments with cold efficiency. Nurse Crawford follows protocols while offering small kindnesses that don’t fundamentally challenge the system. Housemother Mrs. Maynard wields petty power with evident satisfaction. Even Stanley Newell, the journalist who eventually investigates, must overcome his own assumptions before he can see the truth. The novel suggests that evil rarely announces itself; instead, it hides behind professional decorum, medical authority, and claims of societal protection.
The Weight of Historical Erasure
Perhaps the most disturbing aspect of Everhart’s work is its revelation of how thoroughly this history has been suppressed. The American Plan affected hundreds of thousands of women across decades, yet remains largely unknown even today. The author’s meticulous research—drawing on Scott W. Stern’s The Trials of Nina McCall and Karen L. Zipf’s Bad Girls at Samarcand—resurrects these buried narratives. Her author’s note serves as both explanation and indictment, documenting how systems of control operated with legal sanction while escaping historical accountability.
The writing itself carries the cadence of the rural South without resorting to caricature. Everhart modulates her prose to match each narrator’s voice—Ruth’s indignant clarity, Stella’s desperate hoping, Baker’s self-satisfied rationalization. The dialogue feels authentic to the period while remaining accessible to contemporary readers.
When Resistance Costs Everything
The novel’s treatment of resistance varies in effectiveness. Ruth’s defiance feels consistently authentic—her decision to refuse participation in group punishment carries genuine weight because we understand exactly what she’s sacrificing. Lucy, the scarred prostitute who maintains her humanity despite repeated brutality, serves as a moral compass. Her cynicism about Baker’s motives proves prescient, though her character occasionally veers toward archetypal.
The climactic confrontations, particularly the group punishment scene and Ruth’s eventual testimony, demonstrate Everhart’s skill at building tension. The violence is neither gratuitous nor sanitized; it’s depicted with enough restraint to respect readers while conveying its traumatic impact on victims and witnesses alike.
Literary Echoes and Contemporary Resonance
Readers familiar with Margaret Atwood’s The Handmaid’s Tale will recognize similar themes of bodily autonomy and institutional control, though Everhart’s work remains firmly grounded in documented history rather than speculative dystopia. The novel also shares DNA with Geraldine Brooks’ historical fiction—both authors excavate forgotten women’s histories with scrupulous research and narrative empathy.
Women of a Promiscuous Nature by Donna Everhart arrives at a moment when questions about state control over women’s bodies remain urgently relevant. The novel never explicitly draws contemporary parallels, wisely trusting readers to make their own connections between historical and present-day battles over reproductive rights, medical autonomy, and who holds authority over women’s choices.
The Limitations of Historical Distance
While the novel succeeds in making 1940s institutional life visceral and immediate, some contemporary readers may struggle with the period-appropriate language and attitudes. Characters use terms we now recognize as dehumanizing, and Baker’s eugenics-influenced thinking reflects actual beliefs of the era. Everhart handles this appropriately, neither sanitizing history nor endorsing these viewpoints, but some readers may find this aspect uncomfortable—which is arguably the point.
The resolution, while historically appropriate, may feel incomplete to readers expecting complete justice. Everhart resists the temptation to impose tidy endings, instead offering the more authentic messiness of incremental change and partial accountability. This restraint serves the historical record but may disappoint those seeking cathartic resolution.
A Testament to Resilience
Ultimately, Women of a Promiscuous Nature by Donna Everhart succeeds as both gripping historical fiction and sobering documentation of injustice. The novel illuminates a dark corner of American history while celebrating women’s resilience in the face of institutionalized cruelty. Everhart’s previous works—including The Saints of Swallow Hill and When the Jessamine Grows—established her skill with Southern historical fiction, but this novel represents her most ambitious and politically urgent work to date.
The book demands engagement rather than passive consumption. It challenges readers to consider how systems of oppression operate with bureaucratic efficiency, how good intentions can mask terrible harm, and how the vulnerable are most susceptible to authoritarian control disguised as protection. While the pacing occasionally lags and some characters feel somewhat archetypal, these are minor flaws in an otherwise powerful and necessary work.
For readers willing to confront difficult history with clear eyes, this novel offers both illumination and warning—a reminder that the past isn’t safely distant, and that vigilance against institutional overreach remains essential.
If You Enjoyed This Book, Consider Reading:
Historical Fiction Exploring Women’s Institutional Oppression:
- The Illness Lesson by Clare Beams – Explores a 19th-century girls’ school and the pathologizing of women’s behavior, with similar themes of medical authority used to control women
- The Physician’s Daughter by Martha Conway – Set during the Civil War era, examines medical experimentation and women’s bodily autonomy
- The Paying Guests by Sarah Waters – Post-WWI England, exploring women’s constrained choices and societal judgment
- The Pull of the Stars by Emma Donoghue – Set during the 1918 flu pandemic, depicts institutional medical care and women’s vulnerability within systems
- Washing Away by Alice Julier – Focuses on women in mental institutions and the thin line between diagnosis and imprisonment
