The Lies They Told (2025) is a historical fiction novel by Ellen Marie Wiseman, a New York Times bestselling writer known for novels that examine historical injustice, including The Orphan Collector (2020) and The Lost Girls of Willowbrook (2022). A first-generation German American, Wiseman frequently draws on histories of displacement, survival, and institutional abuse in her fiction. The novel follows Lena Conti, a young, unwed German mother who arrives at Ellis Island in 1928 with her daughter, mother, and brother. When immigration officials deport her family and leave her behind, Lena relocates to Virginia’s Blue Ridge Mountains to live with a distant relative. The narrative explores themes of The Dehumanizing Pseudoscience of Eugenics, The Perilous Promise of the American Dream, and Maternal Love as a Force of Resistance.

The narrative is set against two intersecting historical developments. The first is the American eugenics movement of the early 20th century, which influenced immigration screening practices and contributed to family separations at Ellis Island. The second is the forced removal of hundreds of families from Virginia’s Blue Ridge Mountains in the 1930s to establish Shenandoah National Park. Advocates for the park relied in part on eugenic rhetoric, describing mountain residents as socially and genetically unfit in order to justify land seizures, institutionalization, and child removals. The novel incorporates historical figures such as social worker Miriam Sizer and government photographer Arthur Rothstein to situate the fictional narrative within documented events.

This guide refers to the 2025 Kensington trade edition.

Content Warning: The source material and this guide contain depictions of physical abuse, emotional abuse, child abuse, death by suicide, graphic violence, forced sterilization, religious discrimination, racism, gender discrimination, ableism, and death.

Language Note: The novel uses offensive terminology characteristic of the early 20th century and now recognized as ableist and harmful, including words such as “feebleminded” and “insane.” These terms appear in the guide only in quotations.

Plot Summary

In 1928, Magdalena “Lena” Conti arrives at Ellis Island from Germany with her two-year-old daughter, Ella, her mother, Mutti, and her 14-year-old brother, Enzo. The family is fleeing postwar poverty after Lena was abandoned by Ella’s father, a British officer. They are sponsored by Mutti’s cousin, Silas Wolfe, in Virginia, though he expects only Mutti and Enzo. At Ellis Island, Lena witnesses immigration officials separating families during the inspection process.

An officer questions Enzo’s intelligence and marks his coat with a chalk symbol indicating that officials suspect him of being “feebleminded” (19), a term used in early 20th-century immigration screening. The family undergoes medical examinations, including an eyelid inspection for trachoma, after which Lena’s coat is marked for suspected infection. Lena and Ella are separated from Mutti and Enzo for additional questioning. An official reads deportation criteria that include being an unmarried mother. Although Lena is cleared of trachoma and passes an intelligence test, she is sent to a delousing facility on Hoffman Island.

On Hoffman Island, Lena and other detainees are required to undress while their belongings are fumigated with cyanide gas. They are directed through chemical showers and treated with disinfectant solutions. When Lena returns to Ellis Island, she learns that the vessel carrying Mutti and Enzo has been quarantined. An immigration officer informs her that Enzo has been classified under eugenic criteria as “feebleminded” (19) and that both he and Mutti are being deported. He also states that Enzo could be committed to the “Psychopathic Pavilion” if allowed to remain in the United States.

Lena says goodbye to Mutti and Enzo through the mesh of a detention enclosure. They urge her to remain in America with Ella in the hope that she can build stability and eventually help reunite the family. At Ellis Island’s reunification area, Lena meets Silas Wolfe, who is displeased to discover that he has sponsored Lena and a toddler instead of the adult laborer and housekeeper he expected. He agrees to take them to Virginia, and after completing the necessary paperwork, they travel by train to Wolfe Hollow Farm. During the journey, Lena encounters hostility from other passengers. At the farm, she meets Silas’s children, Bonnie and Jack Henry, and learns that Silas instructs them to avoid contact with the sheriff.

As Lena adjusts to life at Wolfe Hollow, she begins to form a bond with Bonnie. Silas informs Lena that she will receive no wages, and that room and board will serve as compensation. Bonnie explains that local authorities have labeled their family under eugenic criteria as “feebleminded” (19). During a visit to a nearby gristmill, Lena and the children meet Silas’s friend, Virgil, who explains that Silas lost his wife and four children and served in the war. At the mill, government photographer Arthur Rothstein and social worker Miriam Sizer stage photographs of local residents to depict them as impoverished. Silas confronts them and accuses them of working for George Pollock to justify state efforts to remove families from their land.

At a community cornhusking, Silas forbids Bonnie from singing a song associated with her late mother. Shortly afterward, Bonnie is injured in a fall, and a local healer, Granny Creed, stitches the wound without anesthesia. Lena encourages Bonnie to teach her the song during her recovery. Lena later receives a letter stating that Mutti died during the return voyage to Germany and that Enzo has fallen ill with typhus. George Pollock visits Wolfe Hollow and proposes that Silas may keep his property if Lena agrees to work for him, a plan that includes undergoing sterilization at the Virginia State Colony. Silas considers the proposal but ultimately refuses after Bonnie and Jack Henry object.

Weeks later, Lena receives a letter indicating that Enzo is recovering. Soon afterward, Sheriff Dixon, George Pollock, Miriam Sizer, and a deputy arrive at Wolfe Hollow. They declare Silas an unfit parent and remove Bonnie and Jack Henry from the farm. Miriam Sizer takes Ella from Lena, and Lena is restrained and transported to the Virginia State Colony for Epileptics and Feebleminded. At the Colony, officials classify Lena under eugenic criteria as “feebleminded” and require her to consent to sterilization as a condition of release. After more than two months, she is paroled and ordered to return to Wolfe Hollow without seeking her daughter.

Lena returns to find Silas and the farm in decline. Shortly afterward, an eviction crew arrives, removes Silas from the property, and sets fire to the house and barn. After being released from restraint, Silas dies by suicide.

Twenty years later, in 1948, Lena lives in Richmond and works at a market stall with Teensy, Silas’s cousin. She continues searching for the children. A young woman named Camille Baker visits the stall, and Lena notices a resemblance to Ella. Lena later attends the Tobacco Festival’s Grand Ball, where a singer named Bobbi Jo Gately performs. Lena recognizes the singer’s voice and a scar on her cheek and realizes she is Bonnie.

Lena and Bonnie reunite privately. Bonnie explains that she was told Silas had abandoned them. Lena informs her of Silas’s actions and death. Bonnie recounts that she, Jack Henry, and Ella were taken to the Virginia State Colony, which included an orphanage. She states that she underwent an appendectomy there and was later unable to conceive. Jack Henry was classified by authorities as “feebleminded,” sent to work on a farm, and later served in World War II, where he died. Bonnie reveals that she and Ella were adopted by the same family, and she knows Ella’s location.

Lena visits the remains of Wolfe Hollow and the family cemetery. The following day, Bonnie takes her to a flower shop, where Lena is reunited with Ella, who is married and has twin children, Rory and Rosie. In 1950, the extended family gathers for Christmas. Ella arranges for Enzo and his family to travel from Germany, reuniting the siblings after more than 20 years. Ella announces that she is expecting another child.