The Lies They Told

The story starts in 1928 when 19-year-old Magdalena "Lena" Conti arrives at Ellis Island with her baby, her elderly mother, and her 14-year-old brother, Enzo. They are excited to meet Silas, a distant relative who sponsored their trip and promised them jobs. However, things go wrong right away. Lena's mother and brother are deported because authorities think they will be "burdens to society." Lena now has to face this harsh new world alone, not knowing if she will ever see her family again. This situation unfolds at the very beginning of the book, setting up the main premise.

The story moves to rural 1930s Virginia, where Lena fights for her dignity and the people she loves against America's rising eugenics movement. The novel draws on real history, including a period when children were taken from their parents, women were sterilized, and land in the Blue Ridge Mountains was seized.

The book deals with the immigrant experience of the 1930s, poverty, prejudice, the eugenics program, forced sterilization, land seizure, and loss. One reviewer warned it is not for the faint of heart, and many readers describe it as emotionally heavy. If you've read Wiseman's other novels like The Orphan Collector or The Lost Girls of Willowbrook this follows the same approach: fiction built around real historical injustices.

Penguin Random House / Kensington | Jul 29, 2025 | 384 pages | ISBN: 9781496758064 |Historical Fiction