What do you think?
Rate this book
Miss Evers' Boys
A two act play for 6 men and 1 woman. From the publisher's synopsis: "In an effort to get medical help for Alabama tenant farmers, their nurse, Miss Evers, convinces them to join a government study to treat venereal disease. When the money runs out, Nurse Evers is faced with a difficult decision: to tell the men that they are no longer being treated and that they are now part of a research study to see what uncreated syphilis will do to them, or follow the lead of the doctor she respects and the tenets of the nursing profession."
72 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 1995
2 people are currently reading
257 people want to read
Ratings & Reviews
Friends & Following
Create a free account to discover what your friends think of this book!
Community Reviews
Displaying 1 - 15 of 15 reviews
July 13, 2016
A poignant story, but I'm not sure by reading the play I got the full emotions. Looking forward to watching the movie and seeing if that changes my mind.
February 15, 2020
This script is a fictionalized account of the Tuskagee syphilis experiment. African American men were part of a study. They were to be observed for six - nine months, and then there was a treatment component. However, funding ran out for the study. Instead, they were "studied" from the 1930s - 1970s and never given treatment for their syphilis, even after penicillin became a widely available and accepted treatment in the 40s.
The script does a wonderful job of covering the amount of time. The script is driven by the events (and is partly told via Miss Evers' testimony at trial) but even so, the characters are fleshed out enough to have some depth. The result is that you can see the good in all of them, and despite knowing how these events largely played out, you can understand how individuals make bad decisions while trying to do the best they can with what they have available to them. And isn't that how most terrible things happen? One good intention in a rough situation at a time?
The script does a wonderful job of covering the amount of time. The script is driven by the events (and is partly told via Miss Evers' testimony at trial) but even so, the characters are fleshed out enough to have some depth. The result is that you can see the good in all of them, and despite knowing how these events largely played out, you can understand how individuals make bad decisions while trying to do the best they can with what they have available to them. And isn't that how most terrible things happen? One good intention in a rough situation at a time?
October 30, 2022
The facts on which David Feldshuh based his play Miss Evers' Boys are harrowing and shocking: For nearly forty years, the United States government and a group of medical researchers perpetrated a base fraud on several hundred men, leading them to believe that they were being treated for syphilis when in reality they were being used as guinea pigs in a study of the effects of that disease when left untreated. The additional fact that a cure for syphilis--penicillin--was discovered some 26 years before the study was abandoned makes this blotch of history even more heinous. And the final detail that the so-called patients (victims?) were all African-American adds the specter of racism to the already ugly ethical morass that this highly amoral project represented.
And yet what lingers most vividly about Feldshuh's angry, polemical play is not the misguided choices made by the scientist/bureaucrats who ran the Tuskegee Study, but rather the squandered opportunities for honest human understanding among the men involved in it. The first act of Miss Evers' Boys introduces us to four of the men who eventually participate in the project, all of them undereducated Black men working the soil in Macon County, Alabama to eke out a meager, hard living. In addition to their socioeconomic backgrounds, they have in common "bad blood," the local euphemism for syphilis; this is what brings them together at Possom Hollow Schoolhouse, where they meet Miss Evers, a smart, kindly, confident and reassuring young nurse whom the government has sent, quite unexpectedly, to provide them with treatment.
Genuinely ignorant and, consequently, fearful of doctors in general and white doctors in particular, the men are skeptical and reticent. But Miss Evers convinces them to join the program and accept medicine for their condition. In the play's best scenes, we watch her "boys" negotiate tentative relations with John Douglas, the white doctor from the North who has come to oversee their treatment: the youngest, Willie Johnson, breaks the ice first, finding a common bond with the stranger in the music of Jelly Roll Morton and Duke Ellington. This tenuous, fragile trust feels sacred and extraordinary because the barriers erected by institutionalized segregation are shown so clearly to be nearly insurmountable. So when Dr. Douglas betrays that trust, it packs a palpable wallop: we wonder how this man, who overcame ingrained prejudice to stop thinking of Negroes as abstractions but rather as flesh-and-blood humans, is able to transform them in his mind yet again, this time into little more than lab animals.
The relationship between Miss Evers and her four charges is nevertheless the play's central one, and although Feldshuh departs from it near the end of the piece to try to parcel out blame among all the study's perpetrators, he renders the growing mutual respect and love among these people with honest insight and humanity. Scenes like the one in which Miss Evers and her "boys" take their first ride in her car together, or another, later, in which 57-year-old farmer Ben Washington gets his very first lesson in writing from the dedicated nurse, express the profound tenderness and joy that come from unabashed and unconditional love for one's fellows.
So the subtext of Feldshuh's script is an unwavering and fundamental truth that we too often forget. If the doctors and nurses and scientists and talking heads who ran the Tuskegee Study had remembered it, there may not have been anything for Feldshuh to write about.
And yet what lingers most vividly about Feldshuh's angry, polemical play is not the misguided choices made by the scientist/bureaucrats who ran the Tuskegee Study, but rather the squandered opportunities for honest human understanding among the men involved in it. The first act of Miss Evers' Boys introduces us to four of the men who eventually participate in the project, all of them undereducated Black men working the soil in Macon County, Alabama to eke out a meager, hard living. In addition to their socioeconomic backgrounds, they have in common "bad blood," the local euphemism for syphilis; this is what brings them together at Possom Hollow Schoolhouse, where they meet Miss Evers, a smart, kindly, confident and reassuring young nurse whom the government has sent, quite unexpectedly, to provide them with treatment.
Genuinely ignorant and, consequently, fearful of doctors in general and white doctors in particular, the men are skeptical and reticent. But Miss Evers convinces them to join the program and accept medicine for their condition. In the play's best scenes, we watch her "boys" negotiate tentative relations with John Douglas, the white doctor from the North who has come to oversee their treatment: the youngest, Willie Johnson, breaks the ice first, finding a common bond with the stranger in the music of Jelly Roll Morton and Duke Ellington. This tenuous, fragile trust feels sacred and extraordinary because the barriers erected by institutionalized segregation are shown so clearly to be nearly insurmountable. So when Dr. Douglas betrays that trust, it packs a palpable wallop: we wonder how this man, who overcame ingrained prejudice to stop thinking of Negroes as abstractions but rather as flesh-and-blood humans, is able to transform them in his mind yet again, this time into little more than lab animals.
The relationship between Miss Evers and her four charges is nevertheless the play's central one, and although Feldshuh departs from it near the end of the piece to try to parcel out blame among all the study's perpetrators, he renders the growing mutual respect and love among these people with honest insight and humanity. Scenes like the one in which Miss Evers and her "boys" take their first ride in her car together, or another, later, in which 57-year-old farmer Ben Washington gets his very first lesson in writing from the dedicated nurse, express the profound tenderness and joy that come from unabashed and unconditional love for one's fellows.
So the subtext of Feldshuh's script is an unwavering and fundamental truth that we too often forget. If the doctors and nurses and scientists and talking heads who ran the Tuskegee Study had remembered it, there may not have been anything for Feldshuh to write about.
January 11, 2018
Other than the middle needing some tightening, Miss Evers’ Boys is a powerful drama and a great example of a writer taking real events and twisting them into a fictional story. As someone who is tired of fictionalized biopics, novels, etc., it was welcome to read a play that took actual events but moved them into fictional characters and situations in order to make best use of the drama and tension of the facts.
Based on the Tuskegee Experiment, which studied the effects of untreated syphilis on rural African-American men under the guise of free health care, Miss Evers’ Boys manages to make a big, multi-decade affair into an intimate, human story. None of the characters are especially deep, but they’re sufficiently sketched out that actors could make them their own. The play provides closure but also no easy answers or demonization. Right or wrong, everyone’s motives make sense.
I wish more authors would take Mr. Feldshuh’s example and not fear fictionalizing events in the name of story. Highly recommended.
Based on the Tuskegee Experiment, which studied the effects of untreated syphilis on rural African-American men under the guise of free health care, Miss Evers’ Boys manages to make a big, multi-decade affair into an intimate, human story. None of the characters are especially deep, but they’re sufficiently sketched out that actors could make them their own. The play provides closure but also no easy answers or demonization. Right or wrong, everyone’s motives make sense.
I wish more authors would take Mr. Feldshuh’s example and not fear fictionalizing events in the name of story. Highly recommended.
May 19, 2017
i've been currently obsessed w the ways in which the concept of liminality is expressed in various forms of literature, so my perspective is obviously very biased. but this is a great example of what the medical humanities can, and actually, do.
May 18, 2017
Great case study on ethics...fascinating stage work/direction...gripping.
July 20, 2021
I cried, and learned so much about this experiment in the process, even with the added fictional elements. I felt bad for Ms. Evers and simultaneously angry at the roles she and other healthcare professionals played in this experiment. I think it is a must read for everyone honestly.
August 20, 2024
A critically important read. We must learn our history so we can fix our current-day issues.
February 1, 2019
Powerfully imagined play that examines the ethics and human costs of the Tuskegee Syphilis Study. Excellent movie version as well which made the characters live, dance, and die with such emotion. Read for DPL January theme of Medicine books.
October 25, 2019
It would be interesting to see this play. I expected to hear that Miss Evers was not knowledgeable of what was going on, but instead she was just as torn as one of the doctors. This would be such a good book club book.
June 6, 2024
I'm always skeptical of white authors writing Black voices because there's that acknowledgement that they're going to miss that cultural beat but, I have to give Feldshuh credit, he absolutely made for a compelling storyline with morally-ambiguous characters. Just as well, nobody else has developed a story such as this.
This storyline is frustrating as you feel helpless throughout this documentation of a great shame on American history, and navigating the physical and moral instability of each character is an involuntary exercise of empathy.
This storyline is frustrating as you feel helpless throughout this documentation of a great shame on American history, and navigating the physical and moral instability of each character is an involuntary exercise of empathy.
August 23, 2007
damn damn damn it was wrenching. i hope to see it performed someday.
September 12, 2014
Heartbreaking
August 6, 2015
A well-written play. This was based on true events that took place in Tuskegee, AL. Hard to fathom that this was based on a true story. If you don't much, this play is an excellent overview.
September 5, 2015
Powerful and sad what we do to each other in the name of science!
Displaying 1 - 15 of 15 reviews