Unfit, A Novel

Chrissy Rollings has a mountain of troubles to overcome. She was born in a small North Carolina town in 1952, into a poor but happy and loving family that always managed to scrape by … until the night her father died in a car crash, plunging the family into poverty. Chrissy’s mother is forced to take low-paying jobs to supplement her meager welfare checks, leaving Chrissy to raise her five siblings. But even these sacrifices are not enough. North Carolina was among the states to practice eugenics — forcing sterilization procedures on thousands of people deemed “unfit” to reproduce.

When Chrissy’s mother was faced with the choice of having 14 year-old Chrissy sterilized or losing her welfare check, she makes the only choice she feels she can and signs the consent form. That act of survival sets into motion a series of events that shape the course of Chrissy’s life forever. Little by little, though, Chrissy claws her way past every obstacle, slowly building a new family of friends and eventually finding her soul mate, with whom she is reborn. Her gripping story is an inspiration for anyone who ever felt “unfit.”