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A Book For Our Times
Written By: Marlene Osteen | Issue: March 2024
Award-winning author Karen Spears Zacharias brings the heartbreaking story of Carrie Buck to Hudson Library, at 4:00 P.M. Wednesday, March 6.
Karen Spears Zacharias
Just as reading has changed – from paper to pixel to audio – and tools for research have streamlined, so have our libraries. Silence is no longer a requirement; and most people no longer come only for books. They come on school trips, for free WIFI, for tech help, for children’s story-time and special events.
Certainly, this is true of Hudson Library in Highlands, a place well known for delivering to its constituency challenging conversations and thoughtful presentations. As will happen on March 6 at 4:00 P.M. when the library will host a free wine and cheese Books & Bite event with Oregon-based author Karen Spears Zacharias.
A Gold Star daughter who calls Georgia home, Zacharias holds a Master’s degree in Appalachian Studies from Shepherd University, West Virginia. An award-winning author of numerous books, both fiction and nonfiction, she is former crime beat reporter, and has taught journalism at Central Washington University. Her work has been featured on NPR, CNN, and Good Morning America, and her op-eds have appeared in The Washington Post and The New York Times. She lives at the foot of the Cascade Mountains in Deschutes County, Oregon, where she serves as president of the League of Women Voters.
Zacharias will be on hand to discuss her newest book, No Perfect Mothers. Set in Charlottesville, Virginia in the 1920’s, it explores characters, historical and imagined, who were parties to the infamous Buck v. Bell U.S. Supreme Court case of 1927. It’s a tale both consistent with the author, whose work on women and justice have informed her career, and relevant to our current times. As W. Ralph Eubanks said, “This is a book for our times, since it is hard to read and not think of the hard choices women are being forced to make today.”
It brings to life the tragically true story of Carrie Buck, who as a toddler was taken from her mother and put up for fostering. At age ten she is forced to go to work as a domestic. When she turns up pregnant at 17, she is fraudulently committed to the Virginia Colony for Epileptics and Feebleminded. 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.
Books will be available for sale and signing. Reservations are not required, to inquire for more information or request an accommodation, call (828) 526-3031 or visit fontanalib.org/highlands
