Unbroken Bonds

DEBUT Hogan’s debut looks at the difficulties young women faced in the days when teenage pregnancies and unwed mothers were stigmatized by society. In 1956 Nashville, 17-year-old Joanna discovers she’s pregnant. Her parents are horrified; Jack, the father of her baby, is married and not in a position to leave his wife; and society is less than forgiving of unwed mothers. Joanna is shamed, disowned, and shipped off to a Catholic-run charity in Knoxville, where she is expected to give birth and then place her baby for adoption. There, she meets three girls who will become her lifelong friends: Jessie, Prissy, and Mary. As the four young women work to rebuild their lives in the turbulent decades that follow, they realize that their unplanned pregnancies—which were often decried as the worst mistake the girls could’ve ever made—were the events that led all of them to becoming the remarkable women they are.