The House of Closed Doors is the first of 3 books by Jane Steen. I have been immersed in reading them all week. So good to find a good book plus the other two are equally good. I bought them on Amazon for my Kindle App. This first on is still free on Amazon, here is the link.
https://www.amazon.com/The-House-of-Clo ... jane+steen
In Nell Lillington's small Midwestern town of the 1870s, marriage is the obvious fate of a young woman of some social standing. Yet Nell is determined to elude the duties and restrictions of matrimony. So when she finds herself pregnant at the age of 17, she refuses to divulge the name of the father and even her childhood friend Martin is kept in the dark.
Nell's stepfather Hiram sends Nell to live at the Poor Farm of which he is a governor, to await the day when her baby can be discreetly adopted. Nell is ready to go along with Hiram's plans until an unused padded cell is opened and two small bodies fall out.
Nell is the only resident of the Poor Farm who is convinced that the unwed mother and her baby were murdered, and the incident prompts her to rethink her decision to abandon her own child to her fate. But the revelations to which her questions lead make her realize that even if she manages to escape the Poor Farm with her baby, she may have no safe place to run to.
The books give an idea of how women were pretty much owned by there family and continues on as to how her life unfolds. In the following books it tells how times start to change a little and one of her friends shocks her by talking of Free Love! Also how girls got into trouble because no one told them exactly the process of how that 'trouble' happened. Must has taken a long time for that to change much as I remember a friend who in 1960 was 21 crying at work one day. She finally confessed she thought she might be pregnant. I asked her what had happened and she said she and her boyfriend had French Kissed!!! I quickly assured her she was not pregnant!!