How great a debt we owe to valiant women of the past, who strained against conventional rules to expand a woman’s ability to be independent and direct her own life! In honor of the recent trend to offer valentines to our BFFs, this month we look at stories about three real and one fictional woman who pushed the boundaries of their eras.
We begin chronologically with MONTICELLO by Sally Cabot Gunning. Gunning’s story focuses on the relationship between Jefferson and his eldest daughter, Martha. After her mother’s death, young Martha accompanied the father she idolizes on his diplomatic posting in France. Returning to Monticello at age seventeen, she is married a year later to Thomas Randolph, a charming but difficult man. Though both Martha and her father have anti-slavery leanings, Jefferson ultimately decides emancipation is not politically possible and Martha, charged with running both her husband’s properties and Monticello while her father pursues his political career, finds she cannot make a plantation function without slave labor. Even with her best efforts, the Jeffersons and Randolphs fall farther into debt. Often working almost independently to manage family property while giving birth to eleven children, intelligent, competent Martha, like most women of her day, is mostly unappreciated for the work she quietly performs. Ultimately unable to overcome the prejudice of her times, she ended by resigning herself for economic reasons to a system she knew was evil, leaving success in that battle to a future generation.
In DOLLEY, Rita Mae Brown illumines the life of another underappreciated woman, Dolley Madison, wife of the fourth president of the United States. A lover of parties and French fashion, she was often accused of being shallow, frivolous and even immoral by a rapacious press looking for scandal—Dolley remarked that “the free press works in such a way that not one of us is free from it.” Through a mixture of diary entries and narrative, Brown reveals the depth of character of this complex woman who was totally devoted to her brilliant husband, James. She supports the President as he attempts to navigate the hostile political landscape of Washington, D.C in 1812 where, amid skyrocketing debt, a feeble economy and lack of public support, the New England Federalists bitterly oppose Madison’s Republican Party-supported war against England. As the “mother country” attempts again to subdue her former colony, Dolley will flee a Washington set ablaze by British troops. Remaining true to the city even after her husband’s death, she will spend her later years working to restore America’s capital from the war’s devastation. Most history is written from the perspective of the men who make it; Brown’s book shows us this turbulent time through the eyes of a brave, intelligent and compassionate woman who lived at the very center of events.
In A WELL-BEHAVED WOMAN, Therese Anne Fowler explores the life of Alva Smith Vanderbilt, a Gilded Age woman who comes to command social rather than political power. Determined to escape the poverty of the post-Civil-War South, Alva marries the scion of the newly-wealthy Vanderbilt family. As a Southerner and nouveaux-riche outsider, she is snubbed and criticized by the Society arbitrars of old established families like the Astors. Undeterred, with determination and endless drive, Alva will survive a loveless marriage, rise to rule society, marry her (unwilling) daughter to a duke, design and build nine mansions, and ultimately divorce her adulterous husband. Taking up the cause of female suffrage, she will become a leading voice in the drive to win women the vote, and eventually find happiness with a long-term admirer. Against the vivid backdrop of an America where limitless wealth exists side by side with dire poverty, Fowler presents a compelling portrait of an uncompromising woman fiercely committed to bending Society’s rules to achieve her own ends.
Our final selection incorporates legend and fantasy in a grimly accurate picture of the life of a fictional Chinese American girl in the 1880’s, a time of racist hatred and violence marked by the passage Chinese Exclusion Act. FOUR TREASURES OF THE SKY by Jenny Tinghui Zhang presents Lin Daiyu, named after the tragic heroine of one of China’s most famous legends, with whom through the course of the story Daiyu will talk about her situation. Her happy childhood ending after the disappearance of her parents, to protect herself, Daiyu assumes her first disguise as a boy and works with a calligraphy master. (A knowledge of the Chinese language will enhance a reader’s enjoyment of the story, as the construction of its calligraphy, how additional lines added to characters change their meaning, connects and symbolizes much of the story.) Despite her precautions, Daiyu is abducted at the age of thirteen and transported to America to work in a San Francisco brothel. She later manages to escape, once again assuming a boy’s identity and making her way to the mountains of Idaho, where she battles against prejudice and violence as she attempts to earn enough to buy passage back to China. Readers beware—there is graphic description of rape, sexual abuse and torture, and Daiyu isn’t guaranteed a happy ending. But the brilliance of the writing and the compelling nature of her story will fascinate to the end.
The stories of our times will be written by strong, determined women ready to confront the challenges that face us, just as these pioneers of the past have battled the restrictions and prejudices of their times to win us the right to fight on. Let’s raise a glass (or a box of chocolates) to these warrior sisters!
THE EXPLORER BARONESS by Julia Justiss
He’s the wealthiest nobleman
She’s a risk to his reputation!
Gregory Lattimer is well aware Charis Dunnfield is not the Society bride this Baron’s son needs to restore his family’s tarnished reputation. She is scandalizing the ton—living mostly in Constantinople and running her father’s antiquities business. Gregory must settle for her friendship instead—and her help vetting other potential brides for him—until she voyages east again. But will any debutante match up to Charis?
Romance Historical [Harlequin Historical, On Sale: October 26, 2021, Mass Market Paperback / e-Book, ISBN: 9781335407450 / eISBN: 9780369711311]
A Baron’s Son Meets an Adventurous Women Who Defies London Society. Will She Break His Heart?
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About Julia Justiss
Real, intense, passionate historical romance
Award-winning romance author Julia Justiss, who has written more than thirty historical novels and novellas set in the English Regency and the American West, just completed her first contemporary series set in the fictional Hill Country town of Whiskey River, Texas.
A voracious reader who began jotting down plot ideas for Nancy Drew novels in her third grade spiral, Julia has published poetry and worked as a business journalist.
She and her husband live in East Texas, where she continues to craft the stories she loves. Check her website for details about her books, chat with her on social media, and follow her on Bookbub and Amazon to receive notices about her latest releases.
Regency Silk & Scandal | Hadley’s Hellions | Ransleigh Rogues | Whiskey River Christmas | Sisters of Scandal | Wellingfords | Cinderella Spinsters | Heirs in Waiting | The McAllister Brothers
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