A searing book club novel for fans of Where the Crawdads 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 ownSome folks will do anything to control the wild spirit of a Carolina girlFor fourteenyearold 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 Leahs country life is as natural as the Loblolly pines that rise to greet the Southern skyWhen an accident takes her fathers 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 welltodo household When a moment of violence and prejudice thrusts Leah into the center of the states shameful darkness she must fight for her own future against a world that doesnt always value the wild spirit of a Carolina girlSet in 1935 against the very real backdrop of a recently formed state eugenics board The Last Carolina Girl is a powerful and heartwrenching story of fierce strength forgotten history autonomy and the places and people we ultimately call home
