Women’s Rights Have Always Been Under Attack
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Please know that I was given a free copy of the book in exchange for an honest review. Here it is now…
This book is interesting but unsettling. It makes the reader aware of the United States’ history with eugenics. In the book there is a dual-timeline that ties a real 1927 Supreme Court case on forced sterilizations to a present-day – but fictional – legal battle inside an ICE detention center for women.
Before talking about Counting Backwards as a novel, here is some research I did on the historical facts: In 1927, the U.S. Supreme Court affirmed the constitutionality of Virginia’s law allowing state-enforced sterilization in the case known as Buck v. Bell. Carrie Buck was the person being sterilized, Bell was her doctor. Bell claimed Carrie Buck was a “feeble-minded” woman whose future offspring posed a threat to society.
It was an eight to one vote in favor of Bell, and Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr. wrote about the case this way: “It is better for all the world, if instead of waiting to execute degenerate offspring for crime, or to let them starve for their imbecility, society can prevent those who are manifestly unfit from continuing their kind.”
Because of Buck v. Bell, 8000 state-mandated sterilizations took place in Virginia and more than 60,000 across the United States. If that is not horrific enough, at the Nuremberg trials, Nazi defendants cited Buck v. Bell in their own defense. Virginia repealed the law in 1974 and in 2002 apologized to its victims
Regarding the novel, there are three main characters. I will introduce them in the order in which I liked them with my favorite character first, Carrie Buck. We meet her in 1912 in Charlottesville, Virginia when she is six years old. It is at that tender age that she is separated from her single mother and from her younger siblings and put in foster care. Her foster family allows her to go to school until sixth grade, but then they need her help at home, so they discontinue her education. When she is seventeen, she is sexually assaulted and becomes pregnant. Ultimately, she is separated from her child and sent to the Colony for Epileptics and Feebleminded. While an inmate there, she is sterilized as a part of Virginia’s eugenics program.
Jessa Gidney is the novel’s main character. She is an attorney at a prestigious law firm in New York working hard to make partner. A mistake she made in the recent past hampers that ambition. Beyond the issue at work, Jessa has many stressors, the main one being that she was orphaned at age twelve when both of her parents died in a car accident. She was raised by a loving grandmother, but it is the grandmother who brings on another stress when she reveals a terrible family secret. And if this is not enough, Jessa is trying to have a baby and has already miscarried once.
The grandmother’s secret is revealed when Jessa takes on a pro-bono case at a nearby ICE detention center. Jessa is there to help a client fight deportation, but in learning about that situation, she also learns of a pattern of medical malpractice within the facility. The similarities between the current situation and the Carrie Buck situation are what cause the grandmother to divulge the family secret because there is a tie between Jessa and Carrie Buck.
I did not really like Jessa as a character, but I was very sympathetic towards her. Her interactions with other people were often hard to understand. But, I know – mainly from other fictional tales – how hard it is for someone to lose a parent when they are young. And Jessa lost both at the same time! So if she is a prickly pear, I felt the need to cut her some slack and try harder to like her.
But then that takes me to the last of the main characters, the one I did not like at all, Jessa’s husband Vance. From the very first pages he lacks understanding of what she is going through with her quest for motherhood. (And as we come to realize, her quest is made stronger than ordinary due to her desire to give her late parents’ genes a chance to carry on.)
The grandmother’s secret impacts Vance’s relationship with Jessa. He also gets upset when Jessa’s pro-bono work causes a conflict of interest with HIS career. And while he was onboard (sort of) for Jessa to have fertility tests, he balked when doctors wanted him to be screened too. Frankly, that was the last straw for me. I didn’t like him at all!
In spite of not loving the characters – except Carrie – I think this is an important book. Women’s rights have always been – and continue to be – under attack. This book is a reminder of that fact. And a call to action.
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Click here to learn more about Counting Backwards on Amazon.
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P.S. I have reviewed another book by this author, That’s Not a Thing. Read my review here.
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