num_pages: 400
description: An emotionally raw and resonant story of love loss and the enduring power of friendship following the lives of two young women connected by a home for fallen girls and inspired by historical events. In turn-of-the-20th century Texas the Berachah Home for the Redemption and Protection of Erring Girls is an unprecedented beacon of hope for young women consigned to the dangerous poverty of the streets by birth circumstance or personal tragedy. Built in 1903 on the dusty outskirts of Arlington a remote dot between Dallas and Fort Worth's red-light districts the progressive home bucks public opinion by offering faith training and rehabilitation to prostitutes addicts unwed mothers and ruined girls without forcibly separating mothers from children. When Lizzie Bates and Mattie McBride meet there--one sick and abused but desperately clinging to her young daughter the other jilted by the beau who fathered her ailing son--they form a friendship that will see them through unbearable loss heartbreak difficult choices and ultimately diverging paths.A century later Cate Sutton a reclusive university librarian uncovers the hidden histories of the two troubled women as she stumbles upon the cemetery on the home's former grounds and begins to comb through its archives in her library. Pulled by an indescribable connection what Cate discovers about their stories leads her to confront her own heartbreaking past and to reclaim the life she thought she'd let go forever. With great pathos and powerful emotional resonance Home for Erring and Outcast Girls explores the dark roads that lead us to ruin and the paths we take to return to ourselves.
language: English
title: Home for Erring and Outcast Girls: A Novel
publisher: Crown