JULIA BREWER DAILY
Categories: Women’s Fiction / Vintage Fiction / Adoption / 1960s
Publisher: Admission Press Inc.
Pub Date: August 3, 2021
But such a life-altering event can never be forgotten, and no secret remains buried forever. Twenty-five years later, the women are reunited by a blackmailer, who threatens to expose their secrets and destroy the lives they’ve built. That shattering revelation would shake their very foundations—and reverberate all the way to the White House.
Told from the three women’s perspectives in alternating chapters, this mesmerizing story is based on actual experiences of women in the 1960s who found themselves pregnant but unmarried, pressured by family and society to make horrific decisions. How that inconceivable act changed women forever is the story of No Names to Be Given, a heartbreaking but uplifting novel of family and redemption.
PRAISE FOR NO NAMES TO BE GIVEN:
A gorgeous, thrilling, and important novel! These strong women will capture your heart. —Stacey Swann, author of Olympus, Texas.
An insightful and sympathetic view offered into the lives of those who were adopted and those who adopted them. —Pam Johnson, author of Justice for Ella.
A novel worthy of a Lifetime movie adaptation. —Jess Hagemann, author of Headcheese.
Readers can expect deep knowledge of the world the characters inhabit. —Sara Kocek, author of Promise Me Something.
This book is a relevant read and one that will keep readers guessing page after page until the very end. —The US Review of Books
Today’s young women, especially, need to absorb No Names to Be Given. —Midwest Book Review, D. Donovan, Senior Reviewer
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“Goodbye. Why did that word begin with good? Did anything good ever come from leaving someone?”
No Names to Be Given by Julia Brewer Daily is an unequivocal jewel of literary fiction that tells the heartbreaking story of three young girls in the mid-1960s who were forced to make a maternal decision that will ultimately affect their relationships, careers, and lives for decades, for better or for worse.
In 1965, Sandy, Faith, and Becca, all from different backgrounds and regions of the United States, arrived at the Magnolia Home for unwed mothers in New Orleans to await the birth of their babies conceived out of wedlock. In this by-gone era, the scandal of premarital sex, forced or otherwise; illegitimate pregnancies; or an interracial relationship were considered scandalous and cause for the potential ruin of all involved. All three girls gave birth on the same day, and all three left the home without their babies, consenting to give them up for adoption without ever seeing them or holding them even once. Their secret shame is securely hidden, and the ties to their unknown children are completely severed, or so they thought.
Julia Brewer Daily’s debut novel, No Names to Be Given, ranks right up there with novels from seasoned authors because it is extremely polished and unique and delivers a robust literary punch. The plot and these extraordinary characters will definitely linger in your thoughts for some time. The pacing is not too fast or too slow, building at the right speed and introducing twists and surprises at the right moments to keep the reader engaged, interested, and hanging on every word. Sandy, Faith, and Becca are roommates at Magnolia Home during their confinement and form a bond that remains unbroken, strengthening as the years go by. Decades later, in the 1990s, they all receive mysterious letters from someone who knows their long-past secret. These women, who are all now successful and well-known in the public eye, wonder why someone would have access to their information and want to use it against them. The truth will astound and horrify you!
“The Big Easy was a city with many secrets.”
In today’s context, it can be difficult to remember that unwed mothers and interracial relationships were still considered taboo, shameful, and improper in the 1960s. Young girls had to abide by their parents’ decisions or made their own hard decisions so they could survive in a cruel and fractured world. The overall topic throughout may be a difficult one, but the language is not harsh, and the sexual encounters in the beginning are not explicit. Portraying the girls’ fear and betrayal after these intimate encounters without any gratuitous details or strong language takes immense talent. Hats off to Julia Brewer Daily for drawing in the reader and keeping said reader fully enraptured to the very end of No Names to Be Given. Whether you can sympathize or empathize with the plight of these three girls, you will find yourself wanting to comfort them, cheer for them, and even know them for the strong women they become, even as they continue to cling to their heartbreak, sense of shame, and loss.
A quirky quotable nugget of a line crops up toward the end that is more at home in a cozy mystery than a literary fiction, but it is worth sharing for its unexpected moment of levity in an otherwise serious tale. Upon reflection, however, this sentiment actually does fit quite well with the overall motif of the story: “On the menu today are marinated lies, served with a side of dread.”
The Epilogue is a perfect amalgam of closure and affirmative change that will bring forth a tear or two and offer a bit of hope that positive things can arise from remaining strong and true, always moving forward, and allowing the good and precious to overshadow the sorrow.
“Our own choices and those forced on us defined each of our paths.”
No Names to Be Given is an excellent choice for readers who love literary fiction with hefty amounts of mystery and suspense, made even more dynamic with the overall theme of women emerging triumphant from adversity and stigma. This book is also a must read in today’s volatile landscape of prejudice against others who are different, who have fallen from grace, or who conceal a past deemed shameful by an intolerant society. In addition, the overarching theme of adoption and its perceived abandonment and the often inevitable reckoning is strongly presented as well, providing the other side of the adoption narrative. No Names to Be Given will hit you straight in the heart, even as you eagerly wait for the next fantastic novel from this amazing author.
Enter the giveaway below on or before August 27, 2021, for a chance to win an Amazon Gift Card!
I received a free copy of this book from Lone Star Book Blog Tours in exchange for my honest review.
Julia Brewer Daily is a Texan with a southern accent. She holds a B.S. in English and a M.S. degree in Education from the University of Southern Mississippi. She has been a Communications Adjunct Professor at Belhaven University, Jackson, Mississippi, and Public Relations Director of the Mississippi Department of Education and Millsaps College, a liberal arts college in Jackson, MS. She was the founding director of the Greater Belhaven Market, a producers’ only market in a historic neighborhood in Jackson, and even shadowed Martha Stewart. As the Executive Director of the Craftsmen’s Guild of Mississippi (300 artisans from 19 states) which operates the Mississippi Craft Center, she wrote their stories to introduce them to the public. Daily is an adopted child from a maternity home hospital in New Orleans. She searched and found her birth mother and through a DNA test, her birth father’s family, as well. A lifelong southerner, she now resides on a ranch in Fredericksburg, Texas, with her husband Emmerson and Labrador retrievers, Memphis Belle and Texas Star.
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What an amazing review — you have so many quotable pieces of praise, I’m not sure what to pull to share! I am so ready for this to be out on audio. Thanks for sharing!
Thanks! It is a beautiful story that is beautifully written. You will love it!