Overview

American history is full of examples of discrimination in all forms, but never before has the wreckage from America’s infatuation with eugenics and its state-sanctioned policy of hate toward the mentally ill been put in such personal terms. In this extraordinary debut book, Pulitzer Prize winning journalist John Erickson answers the questions that have long haunted an immigrant family: Why was a mother in her early twenties imprisoned and then sterilized? What caused her three children to be taken from her and placed in an orphanage that later preyed on children? What led her oldest son to commit an unspeakable act of violence? And, finally, whatever happened to her youngest son who disappeared from her life and was never seen by the family again? This is a tragic story, yet strangely an uplifting one. Because just as officials believed immorality and mental illness were as genetically linked as eye and hair color, various family members would prove them wrong. In a story that will make you seethe with anger and well with tears, When Mortals Play God shows how valuable life is, and how grit and determination can sometimes relegate evil and injustice to a back seat.

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It is very clear that Erickson put in a lot of time and effort to research his own family history as well as the history of the laws and the area that his family called home. His writing allows the reader to find not only relatable humanity but love and compassion for a family that was fundamentally failed by their community, society as a whole and by the government created to establish order and protection for its most vulnerable citizens. He allows the reader to walk a mile in their shoes. -- Post Bulletin Journalist Erickson debuts with a heart-wrenching study of his grandmother's forced sterilization under Minnesota state law in 1926. Passed between 1907 and 1937 in 32 states and upheld by the Supreme Court in Buck v. Bell (1927), eugenic sterilization laws were based on farm husbandry practices and designed to prevent those who are manifestly unfit from continuing their kind. Erickson's grandmother, Rose DeChaine, was twice divorced and had two children by the time she was 20, and gave birth to her third child eight months after entering a mental institution; she became subject to sterilization because she was an alleged prostitute classified as feebleminded. Drawing on family and state records, Erickson interweaves profiles of Rose's family members with analysis of the medical and sociological theories behind the eugenics movement.... [T]his is a well-researched and intimate account of a dark chapter in American history.-- Publishers Weekly Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Erickson explores American eugenics in this bricolage of memoir, biography, local history, national history, and genealogy, which centers on the history of his own immigrant family. His great-aunt, in her early 20s and a mother to three children, became a victim of state-sanctioned eugenic--institutionalized, designated as feebleminded, and involuntarily sterilized. Erickson draws on this personal connection as he explains the rise of the eugenics movement and its adoption by progressive thinkers, and also illuminates the harm done to his own family by so brutal a practice.-- Library Journal

Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Erickson explores American eugenics in this bricolage of memoir, biography, local history, national history, and genealogy, which centers on the history of his own immigrant family. His great-aunt, in her early 20s and a mother to three children, became a victim of state-sanctioned eugenic--institutionalized, designated as 'feebleminded, ' and involuntarily sterilized. Erickson draws on this personal connection as he explains the rise of the eugenics movement and its adoption by 'progressive' thinkers, and also illuminates the harm done to his own family by so brutal a practice.-- Library Journal Journalist Erickson debuts with a heart-wrenching study of his grandmother's forced sterilization under Minnesota state law in 1926. Passed between 1907 and 1937 in 32 states and upheld by the Supreme Court in Buck v. Bell (1927), eugenic sterilization laws were based on farm husbandry practices and designed to prevent those who are manifestly unfit from continuing their kind. Erickson's grandmother, Rose DeChaine, was twice divorced and had two children by the time she was 20, and gave birth to her third child eight months after entering a mental institution; she became subject to sterilization because she was an alleged prostitute classified as feebleminded. Drawing on family and state records, Erickson interweaves profiles of Rose's family members with analysis of the medical and sociological theories behind the eugenics movement.... [T]his is a well-researched and intimate account of a dark chapter in American history-- Publishers Weekly

Journalist Erickson debuts with a heart-wrenching study of his grandmother's forced sterilization under Minnesota state law in 1926. Passed between 1907 and 1937 in 32 states and upheld by the Supreme Court in Buck v. Bell (1927), eugenic sterilization laws were based on farm husbandry practices and designed to prevent those who are manifestly unfit from continuing their kind. Erickson's grandmother, Rose DeChaine, was twice divorced and had two children by the time she was 20, and gave birth to her third child eight months after entering a mental institution; she became subject to sterilization because she was an alleged prostitute classified as feebleminded. Drawing on family and state records, Erickson interweaves profiles of Rose's family members with analysis of the medical and sociological theories behind the eugenics movement.... [T]his is a well-researched and intimate account of a dark chapter in American history-- Publishers Weekly

Journalist Erickson debuts with a heart-wrenching study of his grandmother's forced sterilization under Minnesota state law in 1926. Passed between 1907 and 1937 in 32 states and upheld by the Supreme Court in Buck v. Bell (1927), eugenic sterilization laws were based on farm husbandry practices and designed to prevent those who are manifestly unfit from continuing their kind. Erickson's grandmother, Rose DeChaine, was twice divorced and had two children by the time she was 20, and gave birth to her third child eight months after entering a mental institution; she became subject to sterilization because she was an alleged prostitute classified as feebleminded. Drawing on family and state records, Erickson interweaves profiles of Rose's family members with analysis of the medical and sociological theories behind the eugenics movement.... [T]his is a well-researched and intimate account of a dark chapter in American history.-- Publishers Weekly Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Erickson explores American eugenics in this bricolage of memoir, biography, local history, national history, and genealogy, which centers on the history of his own immigrant family. His great-aunt, in her early 20s and a mother to three children, became a victim of state-sanctioned eugenic--institutionalized, designated as feebleminded, and involuntarily sterilized. Erickson draws on this personal connection as he explains the rise of the eugenics movement and its adoption by progressive thinkers, and also illuminates the harm done to his own family by so brutal a practice.-- Library Journal

Author Information

John Erickson spent more than 30 years in journalism at newspapers in North Dakota, Montana, Illinois and Ohio. At the Dayton (Ohio) Daily News, he led the coverage on three stories that were finalists for the Pulitzer Prize, including a series that won the Pulitzer for National Reporting in 1998. In 2019, he was inducted into the Ohio Associated Press Media Editors’ Hall of Fame. John grew up in Minneapolis, Minnesota, and graduated from the University of Minnesota with a degree in journalism. He lives in Dayton, Ohio, with his wife and their two children. He is dedicating the book to his mother who, God willing, will be 100 years old in November 2021.

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