I quite liked The Unfit Heiress but was quite disturbed by it at the same time. It really upset me to see what happened to Ann Cooper Hewitt, and how she was treated. The sad part is that what happened to her happened to a lot of women, in less grand circumstances, more often than we would think.

Just chilling, and so disturbing as we are not that far removed from this treatment of women.

If I could give half stars I'd give this one 2.5 stars.

I'm disappointed in this one because it started out so strong. The first couple of chapters had me so hooked with the information about eugenics in the United States and the connection to the rise of anti-semitism in Nazi Germany. Learning about how deeply engaged the state of California was with the eugenics movement was surprising and I was so excited to keep reading this book. Then, it fell apart.

By the time I reached about 30% through the book my excitement had waned. The story became really disjointed and jumped around in time and focus. The middle of the book was so heavy with irrelevant information about Ann's parents and I found myself just skimming through it trying to get back to the parts about eugenics and the forced sterilization.

It was fine but unfortunately there wasn't much in it that really captured and held my attention. In the end, it was just mediocre. I'm really disappointed.

The Unfit Heiress: The Tragic Life and Scandalous Sterilization of Ann Cooper Hewitt is an ambitious history lesson that centers the eugenics movement, maternal abuse, legal proceedings, and white privilege. It is a powerful story that educates the modern reader about a more tragic time in history in which the low born, the dark-skinned, and the former slave were denied the opportunity to bear children because they were considered unfit. When a wealthy mother takes advantage of the selective breeding movement and unsexes her daughter it creates a media sensation and for her daughter, it triggers decades of trauma.

Review posted at BookBrowse.com.

The Unfit Heiress: The Tragic Life and Scandalous Sterilization of Ann Cooper Hewitt
by Audrey Clare Farley

I want to thank the publisher and NetGalley for this very informative and emotional book! The review is all my own opinion.

This book really showed that a lot of research went into this! It is very informative, very frustrating, agitating, and emotional. It not only tells the story about Ann Cooper Hewitt, her horrid mother, her inventive father, but the deliberate laws to make America a white only population!

I would never have guessed that legal laws were on the books to sterilize minorities, "imbeciles", epileptics, rape victims, and the poor. The upper middle class white and rich could also have their children sterilized if they were one of the undesirable.

"Why did the Pilgrims come to America? What is the duration of a presidential term? What is the longest river in the United States? When was the Battle of Hastings fought?"
If you couldn't answer these questions, regardless of age, education, language, disability, well you are an " imbecile " and could be sterilized without your consent. Hundreds of thousands were. These were some of the questions asked to Ann who was not in school often.

The book briefly touches on a couple of other cases to make a few points. One case involved a girl of 18 in foster care which only had a 6th grade education because the foster family took her out of school and made her work the fields. The nephew of the foster family raped the girl and got her pregnant. She was deemed oversexed ( because she was raped), imbecile (because she didn't pass the tests because she wasn't educated enough), and untruthful (probably told about the rape which the foster family was hiding the nephew). The attorney for both sides felt she needed the sterilization! Even her own attorney was against her.

Later, 1940's- 1960's, pressure was put on white women to reproduce. Thus, the baby boom. The sterilization keep going on the undesirables!

Ann Cooper Hewitt was born to a female con artist that was pretty, Maryon. Maryon wanted material things and power. She went through several husbands to get it. Ann was a mistake to Maryon. She didn't want her and let her know constantly. I won't tell you about it except to say she did as the title of the book says, arranged for Ann to be sterilized. The will left by her husband said Maryon gets all the money if Ann is childless. Read the evidence for yourself and decide.

It also goes through a very through look a Maryon's life and Ann's life separately. Each one is extremely sad and pitiful. It seems to me that Maryon was seeking material and Ann was seeking someone just to love her.

In a strange way, Ann's case reminds me of the young Kennedy girl's case. Lobotomy to correct a mental embarrassment to the famous father. A socially excepted thing to do with your undesirables at the time. So sad! What has society turned us into?

There are moments in your life where you hear something and simply can't believe it's true. For me, that is usually related to women's issues. Today's topic of 'Please No' is: forced sterilization. I know, hardly the happiest of topics and yet so important to read about, think about, and die mad about. Thanks to Grand Central Publishing and NetGalley for providing me with a copy of this book in exchange for an honest review.

The Eugenics movement is at the root of a lot of the evil we've seen in the last and the current century. At its most basic, the Eugenics movement advocates for the improvement of the human race by eliminating "unwanted" hereditary traits. Although the argues mission behind this is to eliminate human suffering, it (almost) always turns out racist, ableist and sexist. Eugenics meant encouraging desirables to breed and "dissuade" undesirables from the same. The Eugenics movement in the US was a big inspiration for the Nazis in Germany and informed their attacks on Jewish people and the mentally handicapped. These attacks often took the form of forced sterilization and this is something we still see. We see this thought pattern appear in many things we might consider everyday. Looking into the history of the SATs, for example, shows how deeply rooted their creation was in Eugenic and racist thought. Farley does her best to cover these historic aspects in The Unfit Heiress, shining a light not just on Ann Cooper Hewitt's story, but also the story of the people who most often fall victim to forced sterilization: women of colour.

Ann Cooper Hewitt was a young heiress and her mother thought her promiscuous and had her declared feebleminded. When she went to the hospital for what she was told was appendicitis, she came out sterilized. Farley starts The Unfit Heiress with what comes next, Ann's press conference and the beginning of her lawsuit against her mother and the accompanying doctors who sterilized her. From here, Farley unravels the stories of Ann and her mother, Maryon, while also covering the lives and stories of the people around them. We get an insight into the way America's view of young women evolved. We get an idea of the mindset of the cultural elites. We come to understand, slowly but surely, the amount of crimes that have been committed agains women's bodies, especially the bodies of women of colour. As Farley details the later life of Ann, we come to understand she was a traumatized woman, but also a wealthy, white woman. From here, the narrative moves away from Ann which I understood. While Ann's story is important, it is also a gateway to other people's stories who have been kept quiet. For some readers this may fall flat, as the first half of the book is a great biographic effort. But for me, I felt that The Unfit Heiress really hit its stride once it began addressing the current struggles women still face when it comes to controlling their own bodies.

Audrey Clare Farley is a great writer. In The Unfit Heiress she combines biographic detail with detailed research, adding in touches of fictional story telling to elevate the emotions and themes she is working with. It is a brilliant combination and the fact that it works is really all due to Farley. I found myself very engaged with Ann and her story, moving between pity and abhorrence at what is happening to her. I was glad, however, as I mentioned above, that Farley threw her net wider and looked beyond just Ann. These last few chapters might not fit as cohesively to the rest of the narrative but they are crucial to contextualizing the issue and making readers realize this isn't something we left behind at the turn of the century. Many of these antiquated attitudes continue to exist and Eugenicist thought leaders remain behind many current movements, so it is important we keep being reminded about them. I will definitely be keeping an eye out for other books by Farley as I loved her writing style and her approach to this difficult topic.

The Unfit Heiress was a fascinating read, a book that gripped me almost from the very start. With comprehensive research, Farley presents not just Ann's story but also the story of many other women who were forcibly sterilized.

Detailed, fascinating, and shocking!

The Unfit Heiress is the candid, expository tale of Ann Cooper Hewitt, a young woman who sued her mother in 1936 for involuntarily having her sterilized in order to acquire her inheritance, as well as an inside look into her infamous parent’s history and relationship, and the horrifying practice of forced sterilization.

The writing is intensive and insightful. And the novel is an intriguing tale of one woman’s personal experiences, legal battles, and struggles to find compensation, justice, love and happiness.

Overall, The Unfit Heiress is a thought-provoking, comprehensive debut by Audrey Clare Farley that does a remarkable job of highlighting her incredible knowledge and research into this monumental case, the eugenics movement, and the evolution of society’s perception and acceptance of women’s sexuality.

My heart aches for Ann Cooper Hewitt. She deserved so much better and I think this book really highlights that. I am so grateful to Audrey Clare Farley for sharing Ann's story.

"For readers of The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks and The Phantom of Fifth Avenue, a page-turning drama of fortunes, eugenics and women's reproductive rights framed by the sordid court battle between Ann Cooper Hewitt and her socialite mother.

At the turn of the twentieth century, American women began to reject Victorian propriety in favor of passion and livelihood outside the home. This alarmed authorities, who feared certain "over-sexed" women could destroy civilization if allowed to reproduce and pass on their defects. Set against this backdrop, The Unfit Heiress chronicles the fight for inheritance, both genetic and monetary, between Ann Cooper Hewitt and her mother Maryon.

In 1934, aided by a California eugenics law, the socialite Maryon Cooper Hewitt had her "promiscuous" daughter declared feebleminded and sterilized without her knowledge. She did this to deprive Ann of millions of dollars from her father's estate, which contained a child-bearing stipulation. When a sensational court case ensued, the American public was captivated. So were eugenicists, who saw an opportunity to restrict reproductive rights in America for decades to come.

This riveting story unfolds through the brilliant research of Audrey Clare Farley, who captures the interior lives of these women on the pages and poses questions that remain relevant today: What does it mean to be "unfit" for motherhood? In the battle for reproductive rights, can we forgive the women who side against us? And can we forgive our mothers if they are the ones who inflict the deepest wounds?"

FFS! What is it with the wealthy and their messing up their children royally? Just look to the Kennedys for another example!

“ A gripping tale about the atrocity of systematic reproductive control.” - full review to appear in BookList

I knew of eugenics before, and the way women could be controlled without their consent, but not to the extent Farley researched. I was blown away by the depth of Farley’s research and how well she presented her facts in an interesting and readable way. It is unimaginable today that women a hundred years later are still having to fight for control of their bodies. I recommend all women and men read this book.

I was utterly blown away by this book. The amount of information that Audrey Farley has been able to fit into one book is a feat unto itself. I was so frustrating reading about what happened to Ann, but even more frustrated when i realized that we are largely still having a very similar argument over 100 years later, regarding women's reproductive rights and autonomy to their bodies. There is certainly a gossipy/taudry angle to this story, but more importantly, I think it's a very important insight into US politics and the influence it has no world social issues, even to this day. I had no idea that California, the state in which I live, was the leader in the eugenics movement, and actually assisted in providing studies and theories to the Nazis! This book had my attention right until the end when it got into the men's politics of business, which I think it could have done without. Let this one be about the ladies. I will absolutely recommend this book, but I also want to recommend that it be taught in schools. There is a perspective here that I have never seen anywhere else. I applaud Audrey Clare Farley for digging it up and making it so palatable.

"The Unfit Heiress: The Tragic Life and Scandalous Sterilization of Ann Cooper Hewitt" is, at least for the first first half to two-thirds of its pages, an immersive and intriguingly written work of creative nonfiction that explores eugenics and women's reproductive rights framed by the then sordid court battle between heiress Ann Cooper Hewitt and her socialite mother.

It's only when "The Unfit Heiress" deviates from this framework, and it does so especially toward its anti-climactic chapters, that it begins to falter as author Audrey Clare Farley's fact-finding can't replace early immersion into Hewitt's life and a retro-style of writing that fits perfectly within a story timed within the early 20th century and the early years of America's legalized journey into eugenics.

As noted, "The Unfit Heiress" is set at the turn of the 20th century, a time when Victorian values and traditional gender roles were giving way to women seeking passion and livelihood outside the home. Authorities, and society at large really, began to be alarmed at this development and the potential for "over-sexed" women to taint society by reproducing. Against this backdrop, socialite Maryon Cooper Hewitt had her "promiscuous" daughter Ann declared feebleminded and sterilized without her knowledge.

Many argued the choice was justified, though it would eventually be learned that she did so just shy of Ann's coming of age and reaching a point where she could potentially acquire millions of dollars left to her by her inventor father who had left her this money dependent upon her eventually bearing children. It was 1934 and Maryon had seen the California eugenics laws as a way to preserve her own inheritance while eugenicists saw it as a way to boost their already floundering movement. The court case that would eventually follow captivated the American public and media at the time.

For a good majority of "The Unfit Heiress," Farley captures this remarkable story with a mix of engaging writing, brilliant research, and a way of structuring story that weaves together elements of fact with her creative nonfiction storytelling. As an adult with a disability whose life has been at least modestly influenced by Indiana's own eugenics laws, I found myself most captivated by the exploration of eugenics laws and some of the key players at the time along with Farley's exploration of the attitudes of the time even from those whose very job it is to protect us.

It's worth noting that "The Unfit Heiress" is, in fact, about much more than Hewitt herself as Farley devotes at times entire chapters to other key players in the story including Hewitt's father, Maryon, key players within eugenics, and even other eugenics cases toward the end of the book that help to illustrate how the Hewitt case would eventually influence the future and eventual relative demise of eugenics as a movement.

Trust me, it's still alive just in different forms.

The court battle itself is portrayed rather quickly, though perhaps this is inevitable considering its rather anti-climactic facts and the almost surprisingly timid way in which it transpired. To her credit, Farley doesn't sugarcoat the story or try to turn Hewitt into something she wasn't. The simple truth here is that "The Unfit Heiress" risks coming off as sympathetic in telling its story because Hewitt wasn't exactly a crown jewel of humanity and one could say that she shared with her mother a decided lack of maternal instinct. I'd dare say that more than a few people will read "The Unfit Heiress" and decide that Hewitt experienced the right outcome.

Read deeper.

The closing chapters, largely centered around subsequent eugenics-tinged court cases, are intriguing yet lack the style of cohesion of the earlier chapters of "The Unfit Heiress" and while containing valuable material lead to a weird lack of resolution as the book winds down. It's a modestly disappointing end to an otherwise compelling literary journey.

If I could, I'd like go 3.5 stars here but I can't and I found myself engaged, educated, and even entertained by so much of "The Unfit Heiress" that I'm deferring upwards as I can easily recommend the book for those attracted to its story and subject matter.

"The Unfit Heiress" will be released by Grand Central Publishing in April 2021.

I actually really love this non-fiction book. Even though it’s a true story it read very much like a fiction novel. I would highly recommend this.