The Degenerates

Fourteen-year-old London, an orphaned Italian immigrant, is taken by Boston police to Fernald, a state institution that confines people treated as social outcasts. She is pregnant and wants to escape, but shares a dormitory with Alice and sisters Maxine and Rose, who have also been assigned degrading labels by doctors. As the four girls begin to trust one another, London faces the prospect of leaving them behind. The novel confronts early twentieth-century attitudes toward disability, poverty, and institutional confinement.