Missisquoi Bay

By: Errin Stowell

Narrated by: Virtual Voice

1931. Vermont’s northern border. A quiet bay where families live by water, work by hand, and measure worth by survival—not by theory.

When a state-sanctioned Eugenics study arrives in Missisquoi Bay, it brings polished language, scientific certainty, and a promise of “public good.” What it truly brings is judgment—deciding who is fit to exist and whose future must be erased.

Henry Jenkins, a celebrated academic and architect of the program, believes he is saving society from itself. His daughter Ella believes him—until she begins interviewing the people behind the statistics. Among them is Jerome St. Francis, a dockworker and smuggler whose life has always existed just beyond the reach of authority. When Jerome’s mother, Rosetta, is marked for sterilization not because she is helpless, but because she is still capable of bearing children, theory becomes violence.

As Ella’s faith in her father’s work fractures, love, loyalty, and conscience collide. Families vanish. Records lie. And the line between protection and control disappears.

Inspired by real events, Missisquoi Bay is a haunting historical novel about power disguised as progress, the quiet cruelty of bureaucracy, and the people who survive when the state decides their future does not matter.

Because Eugenics was never about defect.
It was about who had the power to choose.