Women of a Promiscuous Nature by Donna Everhart
How have most of us never heard of the American Plan? Donna Everhart’s new novel delves deeply into this troubling early-20th-century government program, propounded to keep servicemen healthy but used as a way to control women and their bodies. The State Farm colony she depicts is more prison than reform school, and the things that happen to the young women kept there would be hard to believe were they not based on actual historical records. After witnessing some difficult scenes of punishment and even medical mistreatment, I was grateful to watch the young women work together secretly to fight against the superintendent and her misguided authority. I rooted for Ruthie, an independent career woman; I felt for Stella, a pregnant teen abused by her father; and I marveled at the misunderstood Frances. This novel, perfect for book clubs, will start important conversations about the ongoing topic of women’s freedom and autonomy.
Women of a Promiscuous Nature by Donna Everhart, (List Price: $18.95, Kensington, 9781496740724, January 2026)
Reviewed by Lady Smith, The Snail on the Wall in Huntsville, Alabama
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“My dad never spoke much about his family growing up. I knew some basics. He had grown up in Hawaii. His Aunt Ruth lived in New York, and his parents had passed. So when he called me and said Aunt Ruth wants to meet you, do you want to go meet her? I was like, so excited. This was like finally a step into my father’s past. We drove to Charleston and went and met my Aunt Ruth and we walked in and she was just this sweet little old lady. We sat and had a great conversation. I was really enjoying getting to know her. And on the coffee table next to where she was sitting, I noticed this wedding picture, and I looked at it. And I’m like, Oh, are those my grandparents? And she nodded, Yes. And I was like, Can you tell me something about them? My father never speaks of them. And she just sat there and didn’t respond. [I asked] Can you tell me anything? How did they meet, when did they get married? And she cut me off and she said, You have a good life. Don’t ruin it with the past.”
Those three years of sixth, seventh, and eighth grade are a time of learning who you are as a person. They’re still kids. They play kickball, pull pranks on each other. But they’re also having their first serious relationships, starting to drink or experiment with drugs, questioning their place in the larger world….I want to teach empathy. I want people to understand the viewpoints of others, and that we are better together than apart. I wouldn’t have been able to tell you that 10 years ago. It took me writing a few books—and coming to that theme every time, naturally, as a writer—to understand. 
I first saw a bog body in the British Museum, and I just thought, How amazing. This is a real person who lived and breathed 1000s of years ago, and I can still see him, and we can learn so much about him and his life, from his body and from studying him. And his people buried him in this place where I think they knew that he would be preserved, and I can imagine them, you know, hoping that maybe we would understand them. One day, I visited the bog where he was found. I really learned so much from that landscape, which today is quite degraded from its former state, but it’s still breathtaking to see, and there are spots of real biodiversity that could come back if protected properly. So I really got obsessed with bogs themselves and with the moss that creates the bogs, and the way it can operate as a colony, not as a single organism. And I really wanted in this book to talk about the non human world. I think that people tend to think that we always drive events on the earth, but there are many other organisms here that have huge impact on us, in our lives, and I really wanted to share that too. 
