-
See Our Best Book
Club Books of 2026!
Summary | Discuss | Reviews | More Information | More Books
by Ellen Marie Wiseman
In rural 1930s Virginia, a young immigrant mother fights for her dignity and those she loves against America's rising eugenics movement – when widespread support for policies of prejudice drove imprisonment and forced sterilizations based on class, race, disability, education, and country of origin – in this tragic and uplifting novel of social injustice, survival, and hope for readers of Susan Meissner, Kristin Hannah, and Christina Baker Kline.
When Lena Conti—a young, unwed mother—sees immigrant families being forcibly separated on Ellis Island, she vows not to let the officers take her two-year old daughter. But the inspection process is more rigorous than she imagined, and she is separated from her mother and teenage brother, who are labeled burdens to society, denied entry, and deported back to Germany. Now, alone but determined to give her daughter a better life after years of living in poverty and near starvation, she finds herself facing a future unlike anything she had envisioned.
Silas Wolfe, a widowed family relative, reluctantly brings Lena and her daughter to his weathered cabin in Virginia's Blue Ridge Mountains to care for his home and children. Though the hills around Wolfe Hollow remind Lena of her homeland, she struggles to adjust. Worse, she is stunned to learn the children in her care have been taught to hide when the sheriff comes around. As Lena meets their neighbors, she realizes the community is vibrant and tight knit, but also senses growing unease. The State of Virginia is scheming to paint them as ignorant, immoral, and backwards so they can evict them from their land, seize children from parents, and deal with those possessing "inferior genes."
After a social worker from the Eugenics Office accuses Lena of promiscuity and feeblemindedness, her own worst fears come true. Sent to the Virginia State Colony for the Feebleminded and Epileptics, Lena face impossible choices in hopes of reuniting with her daughter—and protecting the people, and the land, she has grown to love.
Ask the Author mug winners
Here are the latest BookBrowse mug winners for their questions to our visiting authors: William Boyle ( https://www.bookbrowse.com/reviews/index.cfm/book_number/4957/saint-of-the-narrows-street Saint of the Narrows Street ): @Anne_Glasgow Heather O'Neill ( https://www.bookbrowse.com/reviews/index...
-kim.kovacs
What are you reading this week? And what did you think of last week’s books? (10/09/2025)
I finished The Lies They Told by Ellen Marie Wiseman, which deals with a difficult subject that shouldn't be brushed aside. I've just started The Correspondent by Virginia Evans–hope it lives up to the...
-Carol_Ann_Robb
BookBrowsers ask Ellen Marie Wiseman
I haven't been involved in that at all with previous books, but they did ask me to okay Elisabeth Rodgers for THE LIES THEY TOLD. No screenplays in the works yet. Fingers crossed it will happen someday!
-Ellen_W
What are you reading this week? (8/28/2025)
After reading The Lies They Told I read another book written by Ellen Marie Wiseman. — What She Left Behind. Another tragic story of parents falsely admitting their daughter in 1929 to a state mental hospital because they disapproved of the man the daughter loved. The book emphasizes the horrifyi...
-Lynne_G
What are you reading this week? (8/14/2025)
I just finished The Lies They Told and yes it is extremely stressful and horrifying that this occurred in the 20th century. In the past I have enjoyed many beautiful fall drives on the Sky Line Drive in the Shenandoah National Park, Unfortunately it didn't occur to me that families were evicted f...
-Lynne_G
What are you reading this week? (8/7/2025)
...book rather than reading it, and I think in this case in particular I missed some of the impact as a result. In audiobook format, I'm in the midst of The Lies They Told by Ellen Marie Wiseman. It opens with a German family attempting to enter the US via Ellis Island in the early part of the 20th century, between WWI & WWII. Wow, I was stre...
-kim.kovacs
What are you reading this week? (7/24/2025)
I am a 1/3 of the way through Ellen Marie Wiseman's latest, The Lies They Told, and am loving it! I bet that Ellen would welcome the opportunity to interact with the BookBrowse members.
-Lloyd_R
What are you reading this week? (6/19/025)
I finished The Unraveling of Julia by Lisa Scottoline and The Lies They Told by Ellen Marie Wiseman. Both of these were good. Currently reading Asylum Hotel by Juliet Blackwell. Just started this book, but I always LOVE Juliet's books.
-Elizabeth
Media reviews not yet available.
This information about The Lies They Told was first featured
in "The BookBrowse Review" - BookBrowse's membership magazine, and in our weekly "Publishing This Week" newsletter. Publication information is for the USA, and (unless stated otherwise) represents the first print edition. The reviews are necessarily limited to those that were available to us ahead of publication. If you are the publisher or author and feel that they do not properly reflect the range of media opinion now available, send us a message with the mainstream reviews that you would like to see added.
Any "Author Information" displayed below reflects the author's biography at the time this particular book was published.
Ellen Marie Wiseman is a New York Times and USA Today bestselling author known for the compassion, authenticity, and depth with which her novels explore real historical injustices. Born and raised in Three Mile Bay, a tiny hamlet in northern New York, she's a first-generation German American who discovered her love of reading and writing while attending first grade in one of the last one-room schoolhouses in New York State. Since then, her novels have been published worldwide, translated into twenty languages, and sold more than one million copies in the United States alone. A mother of two, Ellen lives on the shores of Lake Ontario with her husband and dog. Visit her online at EllenMarieWiseman.com.
The Sister's Curse
by Nicola Solvinic
The Lost Story of Eva Fuentes
by Chanel Cleeton
The Vanishing Place
by Zoë Rankin
 (1).gif)
A million monkeys...
Click Here to find out who said this, as well as discovering other famous literary quotes!
Can you name the title?
Test your book knowledge with our daily trivia challenge!
Your guide toexceptional books
BookBrowse seeks out and recommends the best in contemporary fiction and nonfiction—books that not only engage and entertain but also deepen our understanding of ourselves and the world around us.
