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Josephine Morrow is the first of nine “Miracle Babies” who were born to nine women without men’s biological input. The women who participated in the experiment lived on a New England property called the Homestead together, where their girls were born between 1971 and 1975. After the last mother died when her child was just a toddler, most other mothers left the commune with their daughters, scattering across the country. The Homestead then burned in 1977, killing the orphaned Girl Nine and Dr. Joseph Bellanger, whose groundbreaking work allowed the “virgin births” to happen.
Now it’s 1994, and Josie is a medical student hoping to replicate the lost research of her father figure Dr. Bellanger. And her mother, to whom she hasn’t spoken in a year, has disappeared from their quiet home in small-town Illinois, which has partially burned. In search of answers and her mother, she teams up with a reporter who has plans to write a book about the Homestead and sets off to find the other mothers and daughters. As she meets each one, she collects pieces of the truth that contradict what she had always been told and learns about surprising abilities each Girl has. While Josie knows she is facing some dangerous people, the full scope of the threat only begins to take shape far into her journey. Girl One and her special sisters have to draw on their relationships with each other, with their mothers, and the abilities they discover to protect their family.
The premise of Girl One had me imagining this would be a dystopian novel with a society very different from what we know now; however, it presents only a small slice of an alternate history with a scientific breakthrough that affected a very small group of people, with everything else staying the same. It explores the likely ways society would react to a scientific breakthrough where women give birth without men’s DNA. It explores the bonds between mother and daughter, female friendships, and female romantic relationships. It’s definitely a feminist book, and even while showing the variety of ways society likely would react to a scientific development that would enable a world without men, it essentially pooh-poohs the reactions (at least some of which would be understandable and important to discuss as a society) and embraces the notion. Interesting premise and execution.
Rated: High. Profanity includes almost 40 uses of strong language, 20 instances of moderate profanity, 25 uses of mild language, and about 30 instances of the name of Deity in vain. Sexual content includes kissing, some nudity, and some references to sex happening but with few details. Violence includes deaths by fire, stabbing, shooting, and hanging. There is a lot of peril.
*I received an ARC of this book in exchange for my honest review.
