A multilayered biographical novel that explores the career and scandal of Victoria Woodhull.
A fictional account examines one of the most notorious women in 19th-century America.
In this debut novel, Flynn hews closely to historical facts as she tells the story of Victoria Woodhull, a suffragist and reformer who worked as a fraudulent clairvoyant, opened a Wall Street brokerage with her sister, spent time in jail on obscenity charges, and ran for president in 1872. The book opens with Victoria’s abuse-filled childhood, which she escaped through marrying Canning Woodhull at the age of 14. Canning’s neglect and morphine addiction eventually lead Victoria to divorce him and marry James Blood, a Civil War veteran depicted as the great passion of her life. (Little is known about Blood, and biographies of Woodhull are contradictory; an author’s note addresses the book’s adherence to the historical record.) Victoria and James are as passionate about revolution as they are about each other and advocate for Marxism and women’s rights, though Victoria’s embrace of free love puts her at odds with suffrage leaders Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Susan B. Anthony. Despite their love for each other, Victoria and James learn that moral and policy victories make personal happiness difficult, and Victoria is on her own as she leaves to build a new life in England. Flynn turns a history with no shortage of drama into compelling fiction, with a vivid setting and strong secondary characters, particularly Victoria’s unfiltered younger sister and frequent sidekick, Tennessee: “My sister,” Tennessee says, “prefers martyrdom. As for me, I do not want the nails in my hands. I have beautiful, smooth hands. Want to feel?” Although the dialogue is occasionally unpolished, Flynn’s prose is often insightful, pithily capturing Victoria’s defining sense of mission (“Mediocrity’s foe and the ugly virgin have joined forces to give the woman the right to vote”). The woman known to the tabloids of her era as “Mrs. Satan” is rendered as both driven and flawed, a fully realized character who will keep readers turning the pages.
A multilayered biographical novel that explores the career and scandal of Victoria Woodhull.Pub Date: Dec. 4, 2015
ISBN: 978-0-9969832-0-4
Page Count: 328
Publisher: Omega Press
Review Posted Online: March 31, 2016
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 15, 2016
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
Wacky plot keeps the pages turning and enduring schmaltzy romantic sequences.
Sisters work together to solve a child-abandonment case.
Ellie and Julia Cates have never been close. Julia is shy and brainy; Ellie gets by on charm and looks. Their differences must be tossed aside when a traumatized young girl wanders in from the forest into their hometown in Washington. The sisters’ professional skills are put to the test. Julia is a world-renowned child psychologist who has lost her edge. She is reeling from a case that went publicly sour. Though she was cleared of all wrongdoing, Julia’s name was tarnished, forcing her to shutter her Beverly Hills practice. Ellie Barton is the local police chief in Rain Valley, who’s never faced a tougher case. This is her chance to prove she is more than just a fading homecoming queen, but a scarcity of clues and a reluctant victim make locating the girl’s parents nearly impossible. Ellie places an SOS call to her sister; she needs an expert to rehabilitate this wild-child who has been living outside of civilization for years. Confronted with her professional demons, Julia once again has the opportunity to display her talents and salvage her reputation. Hannah (The Things We Do for Love, 2004, etc.) is at her best when writing from the girl’s perspective. The feral wolf-child keeps the reader interested long after the other, transparent characters have grown tiresome. Hannah’s torturously over-written romance passages are stale, but there are surprises in store as the sisters set about unearthing Alice’s past and creating a home for her.
Wacky plot keeps the pages turning and enduring schmaltzy romantic sequences.Pub Date: March 1, 2006
ISBN: 0-345-46752-3
Page Count: 400
Publisher: Ballantine
Review Posted Online: June 24, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 1, 2005
A strict report, worthy of sympathy.
A violent surfacing of adolescence (which has little in common with Tarkington's earlier, broadly comic, Seventeen) has a compulsive impact.
"Nobody big except me" is the dream world of Holden Caulfield and his first person story is down to the basic, drab English of the pre-collegiate. For Holden is now being bounced from fancy prep, and, after a vicious evening with hall- and roommates, heads for New York to try to keep his latest failure from his parents. He tries to have a wild evening (all he does is pay the check), is terrorized by the hotel elevator man and his on-call whore, has a date with a girl he likes—and hates, sees his 10 year old sister, Phoebe. He also visits a sympathetic English teacher after trying on a drunken session, and when he keeps his date with Phoebe, who turns up with her suitcase to join him on his flight, he heads home to a hospital siege. This is tender and true, and impossible, in its picture of the old hells of young boys, the lonesomeness and tentative attempts to be mature and secure, the awful block between youth and being grown-up, the fright and sickness that humans and their behavior cause the challenging, the dramatization of the big bang. It is a sorry little worm's view of the off-beat of adult pressure, of contemporary strictures and conformity, of sentiment….
A strict report, worthy of sympathy.Pub Date: June 15, 1951
ISBN: 0316769177
Page Count: -
Publisher: Little, Brown
Review Posted Online: Nov. 2, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 15, 1951
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