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Take My Hand by Dolen Perkins-Valdez

Historical fiction

Take My Hand

by Dolen Perkins-Valdez

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Quick take

The moving story of a fiercely protective nurse who will stop at nothing to get justice for the girls in her charge.

Good to know

  • Illustrated icon, Social_Issues

    Social issues

  • Illustrated icon, Real_life_characters

    Real-life characters

  • Illustrated icon, Unsettling

    Unsettling

  • Illustrated icon, 70s

    70s

Synopsis

Montgomery, Alabama 1973. Fresh out of nursing school, Civil Townsend has big plans to make a difference, especially in her African American community. At the Montgomery Family Planning Clinic, she intends to help women make their own choices for their lives and bodies.

But when her first week on the job takes her down a dusty country road to a worn down one-room cabin, she’s shocked to learn that her new patients are children—just 11 and 13 years old. Neither of the Williams sisters has even kissed a boy, but they are poor and Black and for those handling the family’s welfare benefits that’s reason enough to have the girls on birth control. As Civil grapples with her role, she takes India, Erica and their family into her heart. Until one day, she arrives at the door to learn the unthinkable has happened and nothing will ever be the same for any of them.

Decades later, with her daughter grown and a long career in her wake, Dr. Civil Townsend is ready to retire, to find her peace and to leave the past behind. But there are people and stories that refuse to be forgotten. That must not be forgotten.

Because history repeats what we don’t remember.

Free sample

Get an early look from the first pages of Take My Hand.

Take My Hand

ONE

Memphis

2016

A year never passes without me thinking of them. India. Erica. Their names are stitched inside every white coat I have ever worn. I tell this story to stitch their names inside your clothes, too. A reminder to never forget. Medicine has taught me, really taught me, to accept the things I cannot change. A difficult-to-swallow serenity prayer. I’m not trying to change the past. I’m telling it in order to lay these ghosts to rest.

You paint feverishly, like Mama. Yet you got the steadfastness of Daddy. Your talents surely defy the notion of a gene pool. I watch you now, home from college, that time after graduation when y’all young people either find your way or slide down the slope of uncertainty. You’re sitting on the porch nuzzling the dog, a gray mutt of a pit bull who was once sent to die after snapping at a man’s face. In the six years we’ve had him, he has been more skittish than fierce, as if aware that one wrong look will spell his doom. What I now know is that kind of certainty, dire as it may be, is a gift.

The dog groans as you seek the right place to scratch. I wish someone would scratch me like that. Such exhaustion in my bones. I will be sixty-seven this year, but it is time. I’m ready to work in my yard, feel the damp earth between my fingers, sit with my memories like one of those long-tailed magpies whose wings don’t flap like they used to. These days, I wake up and want to roll right over and go back to sleep for another hour. Yes, it is time.

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Why I love it

As a tween in the 1970s, my life was small and protected. I listened to Elton John with my best friend, wore saddle-back jeans that happily have never come back into fashion, and stayed out late on summer nights playing kickball with the neighborhood kids.

As you read Perkins-Valdez’s latest, I urge you to consider your own tweenhood. Take My Hand is the story of two young Black girls, Erica and India, who live a hardscrabble life in Alabama in 1973. We see them through the lens of a compassionate, recently graduated nurse named Civil Townsend, whose first job entails working at a family planning clinic. She’s eager to serve her community and aghast when she realizes she’s part of a vast government program to force experimental contraceptives on unsuspecting Black girls as young as eleven. Yet that’s not the worst that’s done in the name of public health.

Inspired by true events, Perkins-Valdez has crafted a riveting combination of family conflict and courtroom drama. But what stands out about this story is the humanity Perkins-Valdez brings to every character, rendering the betrayal of trust even more shocking. The book is a clarion call to remember the atrocities committed in the not-too-recent past, and to protect the childhoods of those to come. Truly unforgettable.

Member ratings (16,121)

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Historical fiction
View all
Lady Tan’s Circle of Women
The Love Elixir of Augusta Stern
The Women
Husbands & Lovers
Shelterwood
A Thousand Times Before
All We Were Promised
Spitting Gold
The Seventh Veil of Salome
The Mayor of Maxwell Street
The Great Divide
The Storm We Made
The Disappearance of Astrid Bricard
Lessons in Chemistry
The Frozen River
What We Kept to Ourselves
Take My Hand
The Last Russian Doll
The First Ladies
The House Is On Fire
River Sing Me Home
The Attic Child
Malibu Rising
The Book of Longings
Hester
The Final Revival of Opal & Nev
The Nightingale
Daisy Jones & The Six
The Lincoln Highway
The Secret Book of Flora Lea
Did You Hear About Kitty Karr?
The Circus Train
Peach Blossom Spring
Hang the Moon
Booth
The Good Left Undone
The Perishing
The Family
Things We Lost to the Water
The Spectacular
Still Life
Send for Me
The Magnolia Palace
The Bookbinder
China Room
This Tender Land
Atomic Love
All the Light We Cannot See
The Vanishing Half
Outlawed
The Four Winds
Independence
The Fountains of Silence
Libertie
Queen of Thieves
The Great Believers
The Clockmaker's Daughter
A Gentleman in Moscow
The Great Alone
The Seven Husbands of Evelyn Hugo
The Heart’s Invisible Furies
Rules of Civility
Circling the Sun
The Moor's Account
Jacqueline in Paris
Don't Cry for Me
The Christie Affair
Bloomsbury Girls
The Wedding Dress Sewing Circle
Bronze Drum