Historic fiction set nearly a century ago resonates as eerily relevant in The Foundling, Ann Leary's novel about a young staff member in a central Pennsylvania asylum for "mentally or morally defective" women, a place where "patients" are victims of the era's accepted practice of eugenics. The premise is chilling and true; in a preface, Leary (The Good House) shares that her grandmother was employed in such a facility.
It is 1927 in Scranton, Pa., and 17-year-old Mary Engle, raised in an orphanage and living with a dour aunt, is thrilled when Dr. Agnes Vogel, the sophisticated, feminist founder of Nettleton State Village for Feebleminded Women of Childbearing Age, offers her a job. "Poor mentally deficient" girls are sent to Nettleton for their "safekeeping," but Dr. Vogel boasts that the asylum's mission is to protect society from the "feebleminded, illegitimate, and delinquent children" they would surely produce. Eager to escape Scranton and join Dr. Vogel in this "preventative work," Mary moves to remote Nettleton and becomes a conscientious secretary. When she meets Jake--a handsome young reporter with a keen eye for duplicity, who suggests Dr. Vogel is "crooked"--Mary initially defends her charismatic boss. But more worrisome is her recognition of inmate Lillian as an orphan she grew up with; she is "impulsive" but hardly the "moron" the doctor claims. Shocking revelations about Lillian, Dr. Vogel and inmate abuse lead Mary, Jake and sympathetic staff members with long-suppressed knowledge of Nettleton's shady goings-on into a heart-pounding climax. The Foundling speaks to the injustice imposed on society's most vulnerable women and the tenacity required to confront the powerful. --Cheryl McKeon, bookseller at Book House of Stuyvesant Plaza, Albany, N.Y.