Please join us for a Q&A with author Ellen Marie Wiseman.
Ellen Marie Wiseman is a New York Times bestselling author of seven novels, including her most recent work, The Lies They Told. Her other works include Lost Girls of Willowbrook, The Orphan Collector, The Life She Was Given, Coal River, What She Left Behind, and The Plum Tree. She loves to write suspenseful historical sagas about everyday people caught up in extraordinary circumstances while shining a light on little-known social injustices of the past and celebrating the resiliency of the human spirit.
Please use this space to ask Ellen questions about her work. As a reminder, to reply to an existing comment click the grey Reply on the right side under the comment. To ask a new question, click the blue Reply button a little lower down.
Ellen, thanks for being here! Please tell our group a little about yourself.
Hi Kim, Thanks so much having me. And thank you to everyone who joins the discussion! Iām truly grateful for your interest in my work and I look forward to all the questions. Iām a NYT and USA Today bestselling author of seven novels, which have been translated into 22 languages. Iām a first generation German-American whose childhood trips to visit family in Germany inspired my first novel, THE PLUM TREE. I have two children, six grandkids, and along with reading and writing, I love to cook, garden, watch movies, swim, and go boating on Lake Ontario, which is right out my front door!
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Thanks again for stopping by, Ellen. Iāll get the ball rolling here with a question about your latest novel, The Lies They Told. For those who havenāt read it yet (and I encourage you to do so, itās excellent), you can find an overview of the plot here.
So Ellen, I was somewhat aware that the US practiced eugenics in the early 20th century but had no idea to what extent. How did you learn about this horrible practice, and what led you to write about it?
I first learned about eugenics while writing my debut novel, THE PLUM TREE, when I discovered that the United States was the first country in the world to undertake forced sterilization programs, and that the Nazi party in Germany took many of its policies, procedures, and theories from American eugenicists. I also learned that the U.S. was the leader in the eugenics movement and, after WWI, held international conventions to spread the word to other countries.
As I continued research for two of my other books, WHAT SHE LEFT BEHIND and THE LOST GIRLS OF WILLOWBROOK, which are about asylums and institutions, I kept uncovering more ties to this disturbing movement.
So, crazy me, decided my next book should be about eugenics. But while researching and writing The Lies They Told, I could only begin to untangle the shocking web of the American eugenics movementāa dark chapter in our history that echoes many of the injustices we see in the world today.
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Iām very grateful that you brought this to your readersā attention. As I mentioned, it was new to me, and I always appreciate historical fiction that teaches me something new.
In addition to the eugenics movement, you touch on a lot of other history from that time period, for example the creation of Shenandoah National Park, lives of the rural community in the Virginia hills, and the immigrant experience at Ellis Island. What led you to include these bits of history in the novel?
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I wanted to start the book off with an immigrant coming into Ellis Island because In the early years of the U.S., immigrants were encouraged to help settle the land and build the economy. But during the first half of the twentieth century, when Americans began to fear that immigrants would become a public burden, degrade the quality of American life, and pollute the American gene pool, the American eugenicists stepped in to implement IQ tests with questions likeāIs it better to sweep a staircase from the top to the bottom or the bottom to the top? And is this photograph a picture of a lady or a dog? They also implemented medical exams that measured nosed and heads and ears. Following each examination, inspectors used chalk to draw symbols on the clothes of those who were suspected to be sick or āfeeble-mindedā before they were sent for further examination, detained (sometimes in cages), institutionalized, or deported.
And I wanted to include what happened to the families in the Blue Ridge Mountains because itās a clear instance in which eugenics was used against U. S. citizens. As a matter of fact, numerous mountain children who were photographed by Arthur Rothstein, including twelve children from one family, ended up in the Virginia State Colony, where many of them were forcibly sterilized. Some of the children were committed just days after Rothstein photographed them. The photographs were printed free of charge in newspapers across the country to convince the public that the mountain people were ignorant, promiscuous, feebleminded, etc., and they would be better off if they were relocated.
Sadly, during the height of the eugenics movement, these kinds of raids happened all over the country to U. S. families deemed socially inadequate.
Your depiction of the immigration process at Ellis Island alone was harrowing. I wish my grandparents were still alive so I could ask them about their experiences, as all four of them came through there from overseas. They never spoke about it, so I had no idea how traumatizing it had to have been. Was that part of the book inspired at all by your familyās experience?
Yes and no. My mother grew up in poverty and fear in Germany during World War II. Then, at just twenty years old, she made the brave decision to leave everything behindāher family, her country, her pastāfor a chance at a better life in America. She boarded a ship alone, filled with hope but facing the unknown. But she came to the U.S. during the ā50ās, about three years after Ellis Island closed, to marry my father, an American G.I. she met while working at the PX near her hometown. She said coming into the country was very easy.
What was the process you used to research the many historical aspects of this book? Did you uncover anything that surprised you?
Hi Ellen, Iāve read six of your books, including your most recent, The Lies They Told, and Iāve enjoyed them all. I especially love when reading to learn something new, and your books always leave me with something to think about that I hadnāt known before. Thank you for writing books driven by meaningful themes.
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Iāve read 3 of your books and enjoyed them immensely. I especially liked THE LIES THEY TOLD, because I grew up in northern Virginia and have been through Shenandoah National Park. In the book, the Authorās Notes suggest that George Pollock and Miriam Sizer were real people. In todayās culture, their activities would be perceived as extremely negative. I realize the dead cannot be libeled because they have no reputation. However, I wondered if you ever get complaints from descendants who dislike the negative portrayals of their ancestors.
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When I choose a topic to write about, I usually buy as many books on the subject as possible and do intense research for a month or so, taking notes and tagging important pages with sticky notes. Of course, Iām also researching the entire time Iām writing.
As far as uncovering anything that surprised me, I found a ton of really shocking information! At its core, eugenics was a racist pseudoscience determined to wipe out all human beings deemed āunfitā and preserve only those who conformed to a Nordic stereotype. But while most people think the concept of a white, blond-haired, blue-eyed master race originated with Hitler, the idea was actually created in the United States during the late 19th and early 20th centuries, decades before the Nazis came to power. This disturbing ideology, along with the idea that selective breeding could improve the gene pool, quickly found its way into every corner of American society. It influenced stricter immigration laws, justified racial segregation, banned interracial marriage, and led to forced sterilizations.
Along with forced sterilization and the institutional segregation of people deemed āunfit,ā American eugenicists once considered euthanasia as a tool for ācleansingā the populationānot as mercy for the sick, but rather a so-called āpainlessā method to eliminate those considered unworthy of life. Some proposed the use of public gas chambers, or ālethal chambersā, run by local governments.
But because many within the movement doubted the public was ready for such measures, some medical institutions began to implement their own solutions. At a mental asylum in Lincoln, Illinois, for example, incoming patients were reportedly given milk deliberately infected with tuberculosis. The idea was that only the āgenetically fitā would survive, which resulted in staggering death ratesābetween 30 and 40 percent annually. In other cases, doctors resorted to ālethal neglectā by letting vulnerable patients die by withholding care.
Californiaās sterilization program was so successful that the Naziās turned to the state for advice in perfecting their own efforts. In Mein Kampf (1924), Hitler quoted American eugenic ideology. He even wrote a fan letter to American eugenic leader Madison Grant calling his race-based book, The Passing of the Great Race (1916) his ābible.ā As soon as Hitler came to power in 1933, one of his first acts was to pass eugenics laws.
And far from being a fringe movement, American eugenics was backed financially by some of the countryās most influential organizations, like the Carnegie Institution, the Rockefeller Foundation, and the Harriman railroad fortune, which paid local charities, such as the New York Bureau of Industries and Immigration, to seek out Jewish, Italian and other immigrants in New York and other crowded cities to subject them to deportation, confinement, or forced sterilization. And thirty-one U.S. statesāplus Washington, D.C.āstill have laws that permit forced sterilization of disabled individuals, incarcerated people, and immigrants.
If anyone is interested in learning more, the books I found most helpful are listed in the back of THE LIES THEY TOLD. And because eugenics is such a huge topic, I added a lot of information in the Authors Note and Discussion guide.
Thank you so much for reading my books!! Hearing from happy readers is wonderful, so Iām thrilled you enjoy my work!
Wow, thatās completely mind-blowing! Iām glad you were able to bring attention to this. I hate that so much of our history is disappearing - let alone the parts that not many know about in the first place!
For the other parts of your research, did you do any traveling or interviewing, or was it mostly books only?
Greetings Ellen! I have your latest book on hold at the library. Iām always looking for novels that expose a piece of history (especially American) that Iām not familiar with. Lost Girls inspired me to find out more about asylums. How do you go about your research? Thanks.
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Hi Lynne, Thank you so much for reading my books! I worried about that a little too, but so far, I havenāt gotten any complaints. Then again, the book has only been out about six weeks.
Thank you, Holly! When I choose a topic to write about, I usually buy as many books on the subject as possible and do intense research for a month or so, taking notes and tagging important pages with sticky notes. Of course, Iām also researching the entire time Iām writing.
Thank you for writing about topics in your books about which the public needs to be exposed. Other than The Lies They Told, I have read The Things She Left Behind, and The Life She Was Given. I look forward to reading your other novels.
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Hi Lynne, Thank you so much for reading my books! I worried about that a little too, but so far, I havenāt gotten any complaints. Then again, the book has only been out about six weeks.
Have you gotten complaints like this for any of your books? People whoāve objected to content, or how someone is portrayed?