Home of Erring and Outcast Girls by Julie Kibler

Julie Kibler's Home for Erring and Outcast Girls is set in Arlington, Texas, at the turn of the twentieth century. Women who were "ruined" by becoming pregnant out of wedlock or even having sex before marriage, whether by choice or not, were often cast out of their families and society at large. The Berachah Industrial Home for the Redemption of Erring Girls was a place of refuge for many of such young women. Kibler's book is a fictionalized account of life at the home and some of the women who passed through its doors.

Lizzie was a young mother who had been horribly treated by her family and left out in the cold, sick and addicted. When the home took her in, her biggest fear is that they would take her daughter from her, but that is not how Berachah worked. They acknowledged the importance of a child and mother staying together and helped Lizzie heal and begin her life again. Mattie was also a young mother who had been left behind with only promises from the man who fathered her child, a very sick little boy in need of medical treatment. That medical help was what brought Mattie to Berachah and to a new life and friends of her own.

In alternating chapters, we also meet Cate, a single woman in her late thirties who works in a research library at The University of Texas at Arlington which houses the records of Berachah. She becomes fixated upon the stories of these women who had no family or friends to care for them, but were able to survive with the help of the Home. Running from her own troubled past for nearly two decades, the stories of Lizzie, Mattie, and the other girls may finally help her let go.

A real place, the Home was open from 1903 to 1942 and housed approximately 3000 women, many with babies or small children. It is hard to imagine a society that leaves women with so few options, but the history shows it to have been painfully common. I thought this book was very good, even though there were parts that were very difficult to read. It frustrates me to think how terribly women were treated and how easily crimes against them were committed. I especially enjoyed Cate's story, though it had its frustrating and terrifying moments as well. I will say that I think this book could use a trigger warning for anyone who has a difficult time reading about sexual abuse, though the author did well not to overly describe those events.