A searing book club novel for fans of Where the Crawdad's Sing and The Girls in the Stilt House
following one girl fighting for her family her body and her right to create a future all her
own Some folks will do anything to control the wild spirit of a Carolina girl... For
fourteen-year-old Leah Payne life in her beloved coastal Carolina town is as simple as it is
free. Devoted to her lumberjack father and running through the wilds where the forest meets the
shore Leah's country life is as natural as the Loblolly pines that rise to greet the Southern
sky. When an accident takes her father's life Leah is wrenched from her small community and
cast into a family of strangers with a terrible secret. Separated from her only home Leah is
kept apart from the family and forced to act as a helpmate for the well-to-do household. When a
moment of violence and prejudice thrusts Leah into the center of the state's shameful darkness
she must fight for her own future against a world that doesn't always value the wild spirit of
a Carolina girl. Set in 1935 against the very real backdrop of a recently formed state eugenics
board The Last Carolina Girl is a powerful and heart-wrenching story of fierce strength
forgotten history autonomy and the places and people we ultimately call home.
