(Minnesota Historical Society Press, $18.95)
On Dec. 31, 1960, Kim Heikkila’s mother, Sharon, entered the Salvation Army’s Booth Memorial Hospital in St. Paul, Minnesota. A tall young woman, so attractive she was in beauty contests, she became a “Booth girl” who would give up for adoption the daughter she gave birth to on Jan. 6, 1961.
Kim Heikkila, a historian, knew about her mother’s other daughter, but she had lots of questions that weren’t answered when her mother died.
Her book weaves together her mom’s prolific writing, interviews with former Booth girls and her research into the 75-year history of Booth Memorial. She tells a double story of her mother’s pregnancy and her own struggles to get pregnant. After unsuccessful treatments, she and her husband adopted son Tu from Vietnam.
The shame surrounding unwed mothers in the 1950s and early ’60s (“what will people say”) enveloped Sharon, who spent five months hidden away in the upstairs bedroom of her parents’ home before she went to Booth.
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Heikkila’s research into Booth Memorial is especially interesting because it shows the change in attitudes toward unwed mothers.
Heikkila, an independent scholar and president of Spotlight Oral History, seamlessly moves between her mother’s story and her own, and those of the young women at Booth who played cards, mopped floors, made brief friendships, entered the hospital room with no preparation for labor or delivery, and usually left within weeks of giving up their babies.
Their talk sometimes turned to anger at the double standard that sent them into hiding while the fathers went about their lives unscathed.
