The Lies They Told

By: Ellen Marie Wiseman

Narrated by: Elisabeth Rodgers

In rural 1930s Virginia, a young immigrant mother fights for her dignity and those she loves against America’s rising eugenics movement—when widespread support for policies of prejudice drove imprisonment and forced sterilizations based on class, race, disability, education, and country of origin—in this tragic and uplifting novel of social injustice, survival, and hope for listeners of Susan Meissner, Kristin Hannah, and Christina Baker Kline.

When Lena Conti—a young, unwed mother—sees immigrant families being forcibly separated on Ellis Island, she vows not to let the officers take her two-year-old daughter. But the inspection process is more rigorous than she imagined, and she is separated from her mother and teenage brother, who are labeled burdens to society, denied entry, and deported back to Germany. Now, alone but determined to give her daughter a better life after years of living in poverty and near starvation, she finds herself facing a future unlike anything she had envisioned.

Silas Wolfe, a widowed family relative, reluctantly brings Lena and her daughter to his weathered cabin in Virginia’s Blue Ridge Mountains to care for his home and children. Though the hills around Wolfe Hollow remind Lena of her homeland, she struggles to adjust. Worse, she is stunned to learn the children in her care have been taught to hide when the sheriff comes around. As Lena meets their neighbors, she realizes the community is vibrant and tight knit, but also senses growing unease. The State of Virginia is scheming to paint them as ignorant, immoral, and backwards so they can evict them from their land, seize children from parents, and deal with those possessing “inferior genes.”

After a social worker from the Eugenics Office accuses Lena of promiscuity and feeblemindedness, her own worst fears come true. Sent to the Virginia State Colony for the Feebleminded and Epileptics, Lena face impossible choices in hopes of reuniting with her daughter—and protecting the people, and the land, she has grown to love.

©2025 Ellen Marie Wiseman (P)2025 Recorded Books

The mountain people were very smart to survive in their environment.

The corruption of those in power was terrible. An official title, degree, or badge should not allow you to abuse others.

Love her books!

Easy to listen to, catches your attention right off the bat, and keeps your attention until the last word. Looking forward to the next book!

So good

Wow. This book was so good. I have never read a book about the eugenics movement nor have I really learned too much about this.

This book opened my eyes to it and what people went through during this time. I’ve always heard about stuff like this happening in other countries but never knew about it in America.

This book was so memorable and emotional. I loved the characters in the book as well.

In this particular book the author talks about the process immigrants went through when coming to Ellis Island. This is something I also have never really explored. And also very saddened by.

The research that went into this book was outstanding and I’m so intrigued to learn more and read more by her.

It blows my mind about sterilization based on disability race education and more. And the authors note is a must!

A Necessary Read

The novel may be set in the 1930s, but several of its themes are hauntingly resonant with today’s immigration debates, policies and realities in America.
The Lies They Told is a strong, necessary read. It does more than entertain: it provokes, it educates, it unsettles. It forces the reader to reckon with how the United States once treated immigrants (and vulnerable citizens) as expendable, “undesirable,” and subject to state-sanctioned abuse.
It shows how power, prejudice and pseudo-science (eugenics) combined to produce human suffering at the margins. For anyone interested in historical fiction with ethical weight, it delivers.

I highly recommend

I have read many historical fiction books and this is one of the best. The topic of eugenics is very heavy, sad and difficult to read about. It is a very dark part of America most don't (but many should) know about. The author balances this heavy topic with a very warm, lovable main character that has the spirit of a warrior. There is so much information but it is presented clearly and with enough emotion to keep the story moving from beginning to end.