THE HOUSE OF EVE

Two ambitious young Black women struggle with the consequences of unplanned pregnancies in post–World War II America.

Ruby Pearsall, one of the two main characters of this historical novel, wants to become a doctor. She’s only 14, but she’s already set herself on the path to her dream as a student in a demanding special program that she hopes will earn her a college scholarship. Her mother is indifferent, her father absent, but Ruby has her own determination and the warm support of her Aunt Marie, a nightclub performer who takes the girl in when her mother kicks her out. Distraction strikes, though, in the person of Shimmy, the son of Aunt Marie’s Jewish landlord, who falls madly in love with Ruby despite her efforts to remind him of the perils of interracial romance in Philadelphia in 1949. Eleanor Quarles, the book’s other main character, is a few years older than Ruby. She’s already in college, at Howard University in Washington, and happily starting to pursue a career as an archivist in the school’s library. It’s there that she meets William Pride Jr., a handsome, charming medical student whose attention to her seems almost like a dream—until she meets his family. They’re part of the city’s wealthy, accomplished Black elite, and Eleanor, who’s from a blue-collar family in small-town Ohio, feels out of her element. What’s more, unlike Eleanor, almost everyone in William’s social orbit is light-skinned enough to pass for White. William’s ferociously snobbish mother, Rose, does not see Eleanor as a potential bride for her son, but William is in love. Both young women get pregnant. For Eleanor, that leads to marriage but not happiness; for Ruby, it leads to a stint in a nightmarish maternity home for unwed mothers. The events that will create a bond between the two are telegraphed a little too early, and the plot sometimes bogs down. But the engaging main characters and wealth of historical detail carry the novel forward.

An empathetic and sobering look at the price women of the 1950s sometimes paid for desire.