Vivid, dramatic portraits of the author’s “misfit” female ancestors and a candid, intimate memoir about family secrets and breaking free from the narrow confines of a “proper Southern woman.”

The Beak in the Heart is a memoir of growing up “Southern.” Betina Enzminger shares the poignant tales of women who preceded her—misfit women who defied authority and suffered the consequences in the repressive South Carolina of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries.

Entzminger links several generations of women from pre-Civil War years to the present, including Victoria, a former slave and concubine to her third great uncle, Rosalee, a great aunt committed to the state hospital for forty years, and Louise, an aunt who unwittingly married a gay man at a time when divorce was not legal in South Carolina. She also shares candid details of her rebellious youth and her own struggles with marriage and parenthood.

In exploring the lives of her spirited female relatives, Entzminger—their educated, rebellious, and misfit twenty-first-century descendant—restores their voices and finds inspiration in their courage and integrity.

The Beak in the Heart speaks to all women, regardless of region of birth, who have felt that society has curbed their freedoms or silenced their voices.

Betina Entzminger