Karen Spears Zacharias with Julia Franks

Join us for an evening with Karen Spears Zacharias to celebrate her new book No Perfect Mothers. She'll be in conversation with Julia Franks, author of The Say So. This event is free and open to the public. Registration is requested, but not required.

Update: This event will take place on the Fourth Floor of Decatur Library. The elevator will open at 6:30. Follow signs once you arrive at the building.

About the Book:

Meet Charlottesville's Carrie Buck, who well knows the repercussions of men claiming legal authority over a young woman’s body. While 1920s Charlottesville, Virginia, is a charming place to grow up, there's one thing Carrie doesn't like about her hometown—her home. Abandoned by her father and taken from her mother, Carrie is put up for fostering as a toddler. A silent child, her foster parents regard her as slow. She feels no obligation to correct them. At age ten, Carrie is forced to leave school to work as a domestic. Carrie's lone ally, Miss Mora, a Scottish immigrant, is hindered by racial barriers from being the helper Carrie so desperately needs. But when Carrie turns up pregnant at seventeen, it is Miss Mora, Charlottesville's most competent midwife, who she turns to. Fearing their nephew's assault of Carrie will be discovered, Carrie's foster parents fraudulently commit her to the Virginia Colony for Epileptics and Feebleminded. They claim custody of her infant daughter. 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.

No Perfect Mothers explores characters, historical and imagined, who over the late 1800s to the 1920s were parties to the infamous Buck v. Bell U.S. Supreme Court case of 1927. Here, Carrie is given back what was denied her by the Court and by society some 100 years ago—her own voice and personhood.

About the Author:

Karen Spears Zacharias is an American writer whose work focuses on women and justice. She holds an MA in Appalachian Studies from Shepherd University and an MA in Creative Media Practice from the University of West Scotland. A Georgia native and former Columbus Ledger reporter, she lives at the foot of the Cascade Mountains in Deschutes County, Oregon. Zacharias taught First-Amendment Rights at Central Washington University and continues to teach at writing workshops around the country. Learn more about her at www.karenzach.com.

About the Moderator:

Julia Franks is the author of two critically acclaimed novels, The Say So and Over the Plain Houses, a debut that was included in many “best of” lists, including NPR’s Notable Books of 2016. Her work has received a half dozen prestigious literary prizes (The Townsend Prize, The Thomas Wolfe Award, The Southern Book Prize, Georgia Author of the Year, The IPPY Gold, and An Earbuds Award from Library Journal’s Audiofiles Magazine). She has also published stories in The New York Times, Ms. Magazine, Lit Hub, and The Bitter Southerner, among other places. Her family roots are in the Southeast, though she was raised as an army “brat” and has lived in many places. For years she taught high school in the US and abroad. She and her husband live in Decatur, Georgia.