Ten Sisters: A True Story

Non-fiction account of 10 sisters separated in 1942, fifty year effort to re-establish ties.

Ruth Waggoner once joked that she wanted a "dirty dozen." She got them. Ruth and her husband, Glen, produced 2 sons and 10 daughters whom they abandoned in 1942, when their marriage collapsed. The boys were grown and gone, but the girls became wards of the state in Mattoon, Illinois, and were subsequently adopted, taken in by grandparents, or sent to the Cunningham Home in Urbana, Illinois. This book is a collective memoir of what happened to those 10 lives during the last 50 years. Now scattered across the country, each daughter has contributed a chapter of recollections in what they call a "personal journal of shared experiences." Although they admit that no attempt was made to produce a "literary work," the women display ingenious writing styles. These are distinct voices reeking with midwestern, self-effacing honesty. In spite of early hardships and a troubled home life, their memories are of square dances, eating watermelon, climbing trees, and the undying affection that has made a family out of 10 not-so-little girls. Patricia Hassler