When Mortals Play God: Eugenics and One Family’s Story of Tragedy, Loss, and Perseverance

by John Erickson, Molly Ladd-Taylor (Foreword)

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 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.

224 pages, Hardcover

Published September 15, 2022

About the author

John Erickson was a British historian of World War II.

Librarian Note: There is more than one author in the Goodreads database with this name.

Reviews

[Jim · Rating 5 out of 5]

Being edited by John Erickson was like watching your baby go through basic training. There’s a reason why the Marines don’t let moms visit Parris Island.

As a reporter working for John at the Dayton Daily News I would hand in copy for my latest investigation - proud and expectant. John would read the whole thing quietly and not change a word. “Fantastic. It’s all here. This is great.” (Insert beaming, blushing sounds.)

“Now, let’s get to work.” Whether it took five minutes or four days, he would read and re-read and re-re-read the copy, changing, moving sentences around, evicting flabby verbs, connecting the dots for readers quicker. It was agony. Reporters walked in a daze from his office to a lonely stairwell to sob quietly into a towel.

But then it would be done. And in the place of a rambling if informative bit of writing would be a taut, snarling piece of journalism. Read me, it said; I’m worth your time. Quick to the point. Clear. It said something, and it meant it.

That’s John’s first book, “When Mortals Play God.” The acknowledgement at the front gives you your first hint that ‘oh shiiii…., we’re in for a ride!’ Deeply reported, this book crams into a 169 pages a courtroom murder/suicide, a cafe bombing, eugenics and its affects on real people like his grandmother, as well as recovery and something like healing. Tight as a drum.

John Erickson is never better than when he felt that an important public wrong needed to be exposed through journalism. It’s not that he doesn’t see the value in the occasional soft, cute story of pathetic losers fighting an uphill battle - he’s a Vikings fan after all. But when he got riled up, that’s when he made our best journalism happen. And here, in a tale of what the state he loves did to the family he cherishes, he is suuuuuper pissed off.

This review would have been shorter and clearer, but I didn’t let John see it first.

[Laura Valenziano · Rating 5 out of 5]

An excellent book about a man trying to find his elderly mother's adopted brother! Well written and informative, the author takes you through the years of searching for information about his mother's family and how what he found affected him and his mother. He also discusses the calamity caused by the U.S. belief in and reliance on the Eugenics Movement in the early twentieth century and how it caused some of the difficulties his ancestors suffered. The book leaves you wondering about the millions of other people who suffered because of these false beliefs.