Everand Logo

Welcome to Everand!

  • Discover millions of ebooks, audiobooks, and so much more with a free trial

    Only $9.99/month after trial. Cancel anytime.

    The Girls We Sent Away
    The Girls We Sent Away
    The Girls We Sent Away
    Audiobook10 hours

    The Girls We Sent Away

    Written by Meagan Church

    Narrated by Susan Bennett

    4.5/5

    ()

    About this audiobook

    Girls in your condition don't get to have their say.

    It’s the 1960s in North Carolina, and Lorraine Delford has it all—an upstanding family, a perfect boyfriend, and an idyllic home complete with a white picket fence. Yet every time she looks through her father’s telescope, she dreams of leaving it all behind to go to space. It’s ambitious, but Lorraine has always been exceptional.

    But when this darling girl-next-door gets pregnant, she’s forced to learn firsthand the realities that keep women grounded. To hide their daughter’s secret shame, the Delfords send Lorraine to a maternity home for wayward girls. But this is no safe haven—it’s a house with dark secrets and suffocating rules. And as Lorraine begins to piece together a new vision for her life, she must decide if she has the power to fight for the future she wants or if she must submit to the rules of a society she once admired.

    Powerful and affecting, The Girls We Sent Away is a timely novel set during the intersection of the Baby Scoop Era and Space Race that explores autonomy, belonging, and a quest for agency when the illusions of life-as-you-know-it fall away.

    “Readers will be entranced as author Meagan Church steadily peels away the veneer of the era, revealing the dark underbelly of a secretive and unforgiving society.”—Tracey Enerson Wood, international bestselling author of The Engineer’s Wife and The War Nurse
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherRecorded Books, Inc.
    Release dateMar 5, 2024
    ISBN9798891784802
    The Girls We Sent Away
    Author

    Meagan Church

    After receiving a degree in English with a focus on creative writing from Indiana University, Meagan Church built a career as a storyteller and freelance writer for brands, blogs and organizations. Her fiction focuses on overlooked and oppressed women’s voices from the past. A Midwesterner by birth, she now lives in North Carolina with her high school sweetheart, three children and a plethora of pets. To learn more about her writing, visit www.MeaganChurch.com, or follow her on Instagram and Twitter @mchurchwriter.

    Related to The Girls We Sent Away

    Related audiobooks

    Southern Contemporary Fiction For You

    View More
    View More

    Related podcast episodes

    Related articles

    • Article

      February’s BOOK CLUB

      Jan 5, 2023

      River Sing Me Home by Eleanor Shearer (£18.99, HB, Headline) It’s Barbados 1834 and slavery has been abolished, but former slaves must work for another six years – for free! In an act of resistance, Rachel heads off through the Caribbean and South A

      4 min read

    • Article

      Most Anticipated: The Great Winter 2024 Preview

      Jan 2, 2024

      91 books we can't wait to read this winter. The post Most Anticipated: The Great Winter 2024 Preview appeared first on The Millions.

      23 min read

    • Article

      Top 10 Books

      Jun 16, 2023

      Top 10 Books
      1 min read

    • Article

      Braving the STORM

      Aug 17, 2021

      Braving the STORM
      6 min read

    • Article

      THE Dark Light

      Oct 28, 2020

      THE Dark Light
      9 min read

    • Article

      The Bridle

      Oct 10, 2021

      Saliva pooled on her tongue beneath the rusty depressor. She endured a constant urge to swallow, afraid of choking on her own fluids. The taste of metal and blood are so akin, it is easy to mistake one for the other. This early in the day, blood was

      11 min read

    • Article

      Speed of Mercy

      Jul 30, 2021

      Speed of Mercy
      10 min read

    • Article

      Three Poems

      Jan 1, 2020

      In class, I stared because of the blood going blue.The chalk that coated our fingerly teeth.The way we lapped each other (on the shorewhere the flowering). I gave away our location. Smacked my lips in the coat closet.Sucked at her teeth. We, on all e

      4 min read

    • Article

      God Of The Woods

      Oct 24, 2024

      God Of The Woods
      7 min read

    • Article

      Island Of The Mind

      Jun 29, 2018

      Island Of The Mind
      11 min read

    • Article

      Fiction

      Jan 20, 2023

      Fiction
      3 min read

    • Article

      To Save Arrhinsal

      Sep 1, 2021

      TOLIN CRAWLED FORWARD, staying alert. All around, the dense, wiry thickets of the hedge were strangely silent. That usually meant danger, when the green tangle of thorns should be cheery with the songs of finches, the dusky clucking of hedge hens. On

      8 min read

    • Article

      Days Of Shattered Faith

      Dec 3, 2024

      Welcome to Alkhalend, Jewel of the Waters, capital of Usmai and tomorrow’s frontline in the Palleseen’s relentless march to bring Perfection and Correctness to an imperfect world. On the ship, as it tacked in past the sea wall, she was in her coffin

      6 min read

    • Article

      To Save Arrhinsal

      Nov 1, 2021

      Tolin lives on Arrhinsal, an island that floats in the sky two miles above the land below. One day, while hunting in the maze of tunnels that run through the island’s thick hedges, he encounters a girl who, her sword raised, has turned to face a huge

      6 min read

    • Article

      From Our Archives: A 1981 Interview With Toni Morrison

      Aug 7, 2019

      The award-winning author Toni Morrison died Aug. 5, 2019. We're reposting this 1981 interview conducted shortly after her fourth novel, "Tar Baby," was published.

      11 min read

    • Article

      The Women Of The Palace

      Sep 19, 2022

      At Georgia’s ragged edge stands a causeway made of earth piled by hand atop bricks and tires, long grown over with grass and sandspur and sea oxeye. It is a tenuous ribbon of stability cutting through mud and salt and spartina, connecting land and ri

      11 min read

    • Article

      The Only Rule

      Jul 13, 2020

      There is only one rule in polite English society, but it is iron clad. Of course, polite English society is a fiction. For one thing, its members are rarely polite. Politeness is for the middle classes rather than those who live off ancestral acres o

      5 min read

    • Article

      Great Read

      Jun 13, 2024

      Great Read
      7 min read

    • Article

      Read A Sneak Peek of IMPOSSIBLE CREATURES

      Sep 6, 2023

      The murderer arrived by boat. He came gently, with a soft tread and beautifully clean hands. He strode past a group of men and women hauling in a catch of fire-fish, his knife out of sight in his pocket. They glanced round at him, but he only nodded

      4 min read

    • Article

      The Last Friend on Earth

      May 4, 2023

      It was as if Doreen Saunders had been waiting for me, passing the time until my arrival. She might as well have been sitting in a rocking chair, knitting needles clicking, jam tarts cooling on the side, the door wide open, waiting for the next visito

      6 min read

    Related categories

    Reviews for The Girls We Sent Away

    4.5/5

    20 ratings3 reviews

    What did you think?

    Tap to rate

    Review must be at least 10 words

    • 5/5
      Wow, what an amazing story. It was based on dreams and reality- both aspects of real life. This book captured my interest from the very beginning.
      The narrator did an awesome job as well, a very easy voice to listen to.
    • 5/5
      The incredibly horrific things that mothers did to their pregnant unwed daughters is almost unbelievable; except every awful detail is true. Any baby should have been a blessing, not something to hide away in shame. The other criminal detail is the money that these "homes for unwed mothers" made to market and sell those innocent infants to the highest bidder. The damage will last at least 2 lifetimes, maybe longer.
    • 4/5
      This is a sad, realistic storyline of the way things were and, in some cases, are. You have a brilliant young girl who trusts her boyfriend, gets pregnant, and he won't marry her as they used to do. It shows her struggles and the pain of giving up her daughter as she tries to move forward. It is well written. A good book.