The Girls with No Names, Serena Burdick

PLEASE READ. THE FUTURE OF WOMEN AND THEIR RIGHTS DEPENDS ON KNOWING THE PAST.

This is a great book, and the fact that it is available during our current time in history is also incredibly timely.

Serena Burdick takes us on a fictional ride during the turn of the 19th Century with Luella, a headstrong fifteen-year-old, and Effie, her sickly younger sister, who adores Luella. The girls grow up in an affluent family in New York City during a time when women have no rights and, at the behest of a male (think father, husband, judge), can be "sentenced" to a reformatory known as a laundry house. These sentences ranged from about three years to indefinite. The transgressions for landing a female in a laundry house were anything from kissing a boy to disobeying the head male of the house (again, think father, husband, or brother).

Luella runs away, and Effie, who thinks their father sent Luella to Mercy House as punishment for her bold behavior, gets herself checked into the laundry house to find Luella. We follow Effie's days of work, torcher, and wrongful imprisonment at Mercy House.

Catholic Nuns ran the laundry houses, wherein they took in the wash of the wealthy in the community and pocketed the money. The girls sentenced to these places were often literally worked to death. Many were left there and forgotten; all were abused and abandoned.

We learn about these laundry houses from Ms. Burdick. They began in Ireland and sprung up all over the United States, hundreds of them throughout the country, where thousands of women were sent for any number of transgressions. Ireland has recognized its past in this regard; the United States has not. As a result, these women have essentially gone into obscurity; they are The Girls with No Names.

This book, released in 2020, touches on many issues that people in 2022 need to pay attention to, lest the past repeats itself.

READ THIS BOOK. READ BETWEEN THE LINES AND BRING IT INTO TODAY'S CONTEXT. You will not regret it. (And it's an excellent book besides - bonus!)