Stephanie Sullivan: Review - The Last Carolina Girl

TITLE: The Last Carolina Girl

RATING: ★★★★

Summary (from Goodreads): A searing book club novel for fans of Where the Crawdads Sing and The Girls in the Stilt House following one girl fighting for her family, her body, and her right to create a future all her own

Some folks will do anything to control the wild spirit of a Carolina girl...

For fourteen-year-old Leah Payne, life in her beloved coastal Carolina town is as simple as it is free. Devoted to her lumberjack father and running through the wilds where the forest meets the shore, Leah’s country life is as natural as the Loblolly pines that rise to greet the Southern sky.

When an accident takes her father’s life, Leah is wrenched from her small community and cast into a family of strangers with a terrible secret. Separated from her only home, Leah is kept apart from the family and forced to act as a helpmate for the well-to-do household. When a moment of violence and prejudice thrusts Leah into the center of the state’s shameful darkness, she must fight for her own future against a world that doesn’t always value the wild spirit of a Carolina girl.

Set in 1935 against the very real backdrop of a recently formed state eugenics board, The Last Carolina Girl is a powerful and heart-wrenching story of fierce strength, forgotten history, autonomy, and the places and people we ultimately call home.

REVIEW: Such a great debut novel! I'd never heard of eugenics before discovering this book, so the shock and anger that radiated through me while reading Leah's story kept me turning the pages, and I finished this book within just a couple of days. Leah is such an admirable character, especially considering all she went through during her first fourteen years. I was glad she had her happy ending, but knowing how it could've been more fulfilling still breaks my heart. I can't imagine what the real survivors of this horrible atrocity in our nation's history went through while dealing with a loss of such magnitude. Meagan did a wonderful job with this story, and I can't wait to read more of of her work in the future. I would never have guessed this was the work of a debut author. The story flowed effortlessly, and the writing is beautiful and stirred so many of my emotions. I would definitely encourage everyone to read it.