Church debuts with a dynamic and wrenching tale of family secrets and eugenics. Leah Payne's mother died in childbirth, and when her lumberjack father dies in 1935, she's taken away at 14 from her rural North Carolina home and forced to work as a "helpmate" for the Griffins, a well-off family near Charlotte. A closet-size bedroom on the back porch, verbal abuse, and a slap from Mrs. Griffin make Leah feel unwanted in her new home. She tries to befriend the Griffin children, but Mrs. Griffin keeps her isolated and busy with chores. She isn't allowed to go to school, and is generally viewed as a problem. Then a local doctor, who advocates for the forced sterilization of the "feebleminded," takes Leah as a patient at Mrs. Griffin's urging. The plot surges toward a powerful crescendo with an action that is both cruel and savage, and a revelation of Mrs. Griffin's secrets. Church effectively dramatizes historical injustice in this searing tale, and adds lush details to descriptions of Leah's life before Charlotte. This author is off to a strong start. Agent: Rachel Cone-Gorham, RXD Agency. (Mar.)

Despite their grinding poverty, Leah Payne's father provides her with a happy and footloose childhood. That all comes to a halt upon her fourteenth birthday, when her father dies in an accident and she is sent to live with the Griffins. But rather than becoming a part of this new family, she is only received as a servant. Leah struggles to fit in and make her way, but Mrs. Griffin seems to have a grudge against her. While Leah makes plans to run away back to the place she had grown up, Mrs. Griffin has a procedure done on Leah in an attempt to make her more biddable. Family secrets and eugenics collide in a dark part of American history that is often ignored. Set in the mid-1930s in the Carolinas, the book explores lesser-known aspects of American poverty and classism and how the now-discredited ideas of eugenics caused lasting pain. This is not an uplifting book--there is no redemption to be found in Leah's story--but it shines a light on a part of American history that deserves to be better understood.