Home for Erring and Outcast Girls by Julie Kibler shows that the
Jeffrey Epsteins and
Harvey Weinsteins of the world were in existence long before the
Me Too Movement. The story jumps around between several women, Mattie and Lizzie who are taken in by the Berachah Home at the beginning of the 20th century and Cate (the daughter of fundamentalist Christians) who experiences abuse and treated as an outcast at the beginning of the 21st century. It is referred to as a novel about gender discrimination. Although there were many uneasy parts of the novel where women were abused, I found most distressing when a man, after raping a woman, suggested they pray for what
they had done. The punishment and ostracizing was all placed on the woman, despite indications that this conduct wasn't anything new for the young man. I understand the reasoning behind having a present day character that shows how treatment of women had changed little in the last one hundred years, but I think the story would have been better had it just followed Mattie and Lizzie's story.
The story is set in Texas in
Fort Worth, Arlington and surrounding areas where the
Berachah Industrial home was located in the early 1900s. During that time there was an area in Fort Worth full of brothels and saloons which was called
Hell's Half Acre. The area today is the
Water Gardens and was used as a backdrop for the movie Logan's Run. (Unfortunately the ocean is several hundred miles away and not directly behind the gardens as shown in the movie.)
Spoiler Alert
One thing that bothered me was that it was never disclosed what happened to Cate's baby - she told River she would explain when she was ready to talk about it.
When the author was asked about this she responded that because Cate was uncomfortable about it, it wasn't the reader's business to know and that we don't need to know everything that concerns other people. I simply call this a loose end and as a reader invested in this fictional character I definitely want to know as did most people in my book club.
