The Girls With No Names by Serena Burdick
For 13 years, sisters Luella and Effie Tildon have never left each other’s side. When the unthinkable separates them, can they each survive without the other, and can their mother Jeanne overcome the grief of losing them?
In The Girls With No Names (Park Row), author Serena Burdick weaves a dark historical tale of teen girls from different walks of life who must overcome devastating circumstances in their battle to survive.
Luella and Effie lead a charmed life. Daughters of a wealthy New York businessman, they have everything they could ever want. Except freedom. Headstrong Luella feels suffocated — at 16, she yearns to experience more independence and a less structured life. When she and Effie hear beautiful singing and music while walking through the forest, Luella is entranced by the carefree gypsies living at a nearby encampment, and is drawn to their way of life.
NOT WITHOUT MY SISTER!
Effie was born with a fatal heart condition. She wasn’t supposed to live, but she’d learned to control the “blue fits” that threatened her frail body if she overexerted herself. But Effie really didn’t mind having a hole in her heart. “I viewed the world through that small, damaged portal. It was a weakness I sharpened my strength upon. From behind its protective edges, I could be brave.”
When Effie wakes one day to find Luella missing without explanation, she’s sure her father had made good on his threat to send her to the nearby House of Mercy, an Episcopal home for wayward girls — the place they sent bad girls for redemption. Effie resolves to rescue her sister and devises a scheme to have herself committed to the asylum to find Luella. But instead of her sister, what she finds there almost kills her, and no one believes she’s there by mistake. She’s a prisoner.
Mable Winter was also imprisoned at the House of Mercy for things she didn’t do, but they are far better than the unforgivable crime she is guilty of committing. She knows she should be punished for her sins, but can’t bear more time at the asylum.
THE HEART OF THE WISE IS IN THE HOUSE OF MOURNING …
After toiling at the reform house in dangerous conditions — washing and ironing rich peoples’ laundry — and spending time in the cold, dark basement known as “the pit” as the punishment for infractions, Effie realizes what a gift her privileged life was, safe from the horrors her fellow inmates had experienced.
“True danger was seeing your mother’s face smashed in. True danger was being fondled by an uncle and unjustly locked away. True danger was being gagged and thrown in the basement by Sister Gertrude. True danger was leaping from a second-story window and making a run for it in the dark.”
Effie will forgive her father for his affair with his mistress, her mother for allowing his infidelity, and Luella for leaving her without a word, if only she can get back home. If her desperation doesn’t kill her, her heart condition will. With help from the fiercely courageous but damaged Mable, Effie plans their escape.
ESCAPING EXTERNAL AND INTERNAL CAPTIVITY
Alternating narratives by Effie, Jeanne and Mable give first-person accounts of each woman’s story, while the tale intertwines their lives. Burdick reveals the perils of being a woman in 1913 and exposes the truths of their varying social circles. The first-person narratives place us into the minds of each woman, exposing her fears and hopes, and the strength needed to live through another day.
Burdick explains that the House of Mercy was a real institution built in 1891 to house “destitute and fallen women.” Asylums like it, and the Magdalene laundries of Ireland, claimed to reform depraved women but were actually socially acceptable prisons that used slave-labor — washing and ironing clothes, making lace — to earn millions of dollars for the church. “The women were lucky if they made it through a day without crushing a finger or scalding their hands from the vats of boiling water as they scrubbed, ironed and folded.”
The Girls With No Names gives voice to the perils and injustice suffered by women in the early twentieth century. Whether privileged or poor, society punished those who didn’t meet its expectations. It is now available for purchase.
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