Author Entertainment Series – Karen Spears Zacharias

No Perfect Mothers

“From a century-old knot of injustice, Karen Spears Zacharias pulls a thread of story that speaks to injustice now,” says Kim Stafford, author of As the Sky Begins to Change. “No Perfect Mothers joins a true story richly imagined to both local kin and the U.S. Supreme Court in a case that dealt misery to thousands. But it is the immediate tale of Carrie’s struggle for dignity that will catch you. How can a girl child, judged and wronged, deprived of all she loves, ultimately prevail? She can wait for this book, as this book now waits for you.” There is much about her hometown that Carrie Buck loves: Venable Elementary where she first learned to read; Starr Hill because that’s where Miss Mora lives; Chancellor’s Drugstore where she sometimes gets a free cola; and Anderson’s Bookstore where a girl can look through all the books she likes. While 1920s Charlottesville, Virginia, is a charming place to grow up, there’s one thing Carrie doesn’t like about her hometown—her home. Abandoned by her father and taken from her mother, Carrie is put up for fostering as a toddler. A silent child, her foster parents regard her as slow. She feels no obligation to correct them. At age ten, Carrie is forced to leave school to work as a domestic. Carrie’s lone ally, Miss Mora, a Scottish immigrant, is hindered by racial barriers from being the helper Carrie so desperately needs. But when Carrie turns up pregnant at seventeen, it is Miss Mora, Charlottesville’s most competent midwife, who she turns to. Fearing their nephew’s assault of Carrie will be discovered, Carrie’s foster parents fraudulently commit her to the Virginia Colony for Epileptics and Feebleminded. They claim custody of her infant daughter. Dr. Priddy, the colony’s superintendent, deceptively labels Carrie an imbecile, unfit to bear children. In pursuit of a legal argument granting states the right to forcibly sterilize individuals, he exploits her. No Perfect Mothers explores characters, historical and imagined, who over the late 1800s to the 1920s were parties to the infamous Buck v. Bell U.S. Supreme Court case of 1927. Here, Carrie is given back what was denied her by the Court and by society some 100 years ago—her own voice and personhood.

Meet The Author

Karen Spears Zacharias is an American writer whose work focuses on women and justice. She holds an MA in Appalachian Studies from Shepherd University and an MA in Creative Media Practice from the University of West Scotland. She lives at the foot of the Cascade Mountains in Deschutes County, Oregon. Zacharias taught First-Amendment Rights at Central Washington University and continues to teach at writing workshops around the country. Karen grew up in Columbus, GA, attended Berry College, and then completed her undergraduate education at Oregon State University.

Learn more about Karen at www.karenzach.com.