Where The Streetlight Ends by Bradley Butts; Being Laramie Buchanan Another Boulder Girl by Cynthia L. Clark, The Courage of Two Anne Hutchinson and Mary Dyer and The Fight For Freedom of Conscience in Early America by Nancy Kelley

 

Where The Streetlight Ends by Bradley Butts

This review is also on Reedsy Discovery 

Bradley Butts’ Horror Anthology is a strange but brilliant combination of classic supernatural campfire tales and postmodern existentialist terror. It reminds us that when it comes to paranormal horror, evil can be found in any form, in any setting, and in any time.

“The Doodle”

Alex, a high school student, has written conversations with a sentient doodled figure on the wall. 

The conflict between The Doodle and Alex are chilling as The Doodle recognizes and uses Alex's loneliness for friends and skepticism against him. The Doodle is a character that intentionally starts out as welcoming and friendly. There are moments where its presence is almost adorable like when it tells Alex that it is his friend. 

It becomes possessive and sinister when it feels abandoned by Alex. For example, it doesn't understand the concept of weekends when Alex is not in school. The smiley face becomes a frown and the wide curious eyes are narrowed in anger. It defaces Alex's notebooks and desks, calls him a bad friend, and threatens to kill him.

Alex's curiosity and eventual terror are multiplied because for a long time believes that he is having conversations with a human who is sending secret messages. His insistence that he is stalked by a human adversary is a means to gain control of this creepy situation. If he attributes it to a human something that can be stopped by normal means like expulsion or arrest. A supernatural presence in the form of a living drawing resists being defeated or contained so could stalk a human in perpetuity.

“The Strange Sound”

A sound affects all who hear it, particularly most of the student body of a high school.

This story recognizes the value of not displaying or telling much and leaving our imagination to do the heavy lifting. We are not given specifics of what the sound is as witnesses compare it to a hum or a whisper. We aren't told where it comes from, why certain students are affected, or what the whispers actually say that upset those who hear it.

The physical, mental, and emotional changes are the focus. The narrator's friend, Sara is one of the first to hear it and she goes from a bright curious teen to a catatonic zombie. She becomes languid, inert, lethargic and is devoid of energy and vitality.

The sound affects other classmates until over half of the student body is afflicted leaving friends, classmates, educators, families, and the entire town at a loss. The physical and mental impact of an unexplained phenomena affecting almost an entire generation cannot be overstated as the kids deal with the mysterious strain of this phenomena and their surviving loved ones have to cope with the loss and aftermath.

“Hangman on the Dark Web”

An innocent round of the spelling game Hangman becomes all too real for the young man playing it on the confidential and exploitative Dark Web.

Many of the stories deal with the fear that can be found through modern technology. This and the next story deal with that subject. This one attacks online fascination with the ghoulish, violence, forbidden, bizarre, and morbid particularly on the Dark Web.

The game goes from a spelling time waster to a psychological trap. The Gamemaster reveals personal information that the Narrator never said. Instead of a generic stick figure in the noose ready to meet its maker, the figure is all too familiar to the helpless Narrator. The only thing that he can do is play to rescue the doomed character.

While many of the stories don't have much of an explanation of where the creepy events originated, this story provides a few hints. The puzzle’s resolution, a famous literary quote, provides a clue. It indicates that the Narrator brought this disaster on himself for being overly curious, not cautious enough, and meddled into dark places where he doesn't belong. To quote the movie Wargames, “The best way to win is not to play.”

“The Filter”

Chloe uses a new filter on her selfie and her picture and face go through painful changes.

This is the second tech related story and covers another online obsession: using AI and filters to improve one's appearance and to make them look more attractive and flawless to followers.  

As Chloe changes her picture, she finds her face becoming painfully distorted to match the image. It does not skimp in describing the torture as her eyes enlarge, her skin is stretched, and her bone structure is manipulated. She is in agony.

Most readers would probably wonder why Chloe doesn't stop altering the filter but it appears that she can't. She is compelled and addicted to changing her appearance and can't stop even when she wants to. She is deprived of her personality and free will and turns into something that only exists to be looked at.

“The Beckoning Call of Black Hollow”

David visits an abandoned wooded area for his forestry studies and is frightened by the local monsters.

After covering modern sensibilities with two tech heavy stories, this one returns to basics. It's a campfire tale about the monsters in the woods with some interesting twists. This story has a strong ominous atmosphere. Everything from the winding trees, the magnified sounds and smells, and the chill in the air already gives an unsettling energy even before the creepy stuff happens. Of course once they start, it gets worse. 

David hears disembodied voices call his name and imitate people in his life to draw him outside to respond. He was warned not to respond to the voices and or go outside to see where they are coming from. This is advice he follows to the letter proving that he has more intelligence and common sense than most horror protagonists. It reminds readers that sometimes what you suspect and hear  can be just as frightening as what you do see.

The monsters themselves are a slight letdown as the approaching feelings and voices were much scarier than their physical presence. However, they are clearly inspired by the most recent infamous monsters that have haunted the Internet and social media communities for a few years now. It adds a current sheen to old tales by saying that the monsters might change appearance but the fears are the same. The fears of loneliness, isolation, the dark, insanity, and the possibility of evil. Those will never leave.

Being Laramie Buchanan Another Boulder Girl by Cynthia L. Clark

Cynthia L. Clark’s Being Laramie Buchanan has a decent lead character with a lot of depth and layers. Unfortunately, it gives her a substandard plot that alternates between too much and not enough.

Laramie Buchanan has plenty of problems. Her mother has died and her father is consumed with grief. She hovers between her job as an events coordinator at an art gallery and Yoga studies. Her love life is also complicated. Her romance with restaurateur Vick ends badly and she is interested in Chance who assists at the resort where she attends her Yoga retreat.

It's an odd contrast when a book succeeds so well with their protagonist but falters so much with the plot that is put around her. The strength of Laramie's character cannot overcome the weakness of the plot or plots. Some things are over explained either in dialogue or narration.The book can't decide whether it's a romance, a family drama, a woman's fiction, a thriller, or a bildungsroman.More twists and unnecessary complications are thrown in a book that didn't need more of them.

It's a shame that Laramie Buchanan does not live in a better book. 

The Courage of Two: Anne Hutchinson, Mary Dyer, and The Fight For Freedom of Conscience in Early America by Nancy Kelley 

This is a review summary. The full review is on LitPick 

Nancy Kelley’s Courage of Two Anne Hutchinson, Mary Dyer, and The Fight For Freedom of Conscience in Early America is a fascinating account of two women who stood for their beliefs, made their opinions known, and refused to be silent in the face of adversity

This is a nonfiction book about Anne Hutchinson and Mary Dyer, two women who offended the religious establishment in the 1660s with their outspoken views on religion. Hutchinson preached from the Bible during private meetings and Dyer’s embrace of Quakerism put them at the center of controversies in which they were persecuted, arrested, tried, and threatened with exile and death.

Hutchinson showed a lot of spunk and knowledge in sessions and when being confronted by authority. Her Biblical studies were quite detailed and academic. She also had a witty, almost sardonic way of defending herself especially during her trials. Her words offended the Puritan community and she was eventually banished. 

The other deuteragonist, Mary Dyer, had a slow start in the book. She started out as one of Hutchinson’s students and strongest defenders. 

After Hutchinson died, Dyer came into her own. She joined The Society of Friends AKA The Quakers, a sect that Hutchinson would have fit in perfectly. Puritans considered Quakers, especially Quaker women, a threat. They made Dyer an example of their hatred sending her to her death and Quaker martyrdom.

People who are interested in religion will look at women of the past practicing their faith and living according to their beliefs. But even those who are interested in history will be interested in this book about two women remembered for challenging patriarchal authority.

Weekly Reader: Walt Disney: The Triumph of the American Imagination by Neal Gabler; A Comprehensive Biography About The Good and The Bad of The Man Who Taught Us All To Wish Upon a Star

Weekly Reader: Walt Disney: The Triumph of the American Imagination by Neal Gabler; A Comprehensive Biography About The Good and The Bad of The Man Who Taught Us All To Wish Upon a Star

By Julie Sara Porter

Bookworm Reviews




Like the subject of last week's biography, Barbie, the image of Walt Disney and the company he produced are what we put into them. Are Disney's products beautiful works of art and offer a sense of magic, escapism, and wish fulfillment to those who come into contact with them? Are they over commercialized pieces of tripe that distort the original stories from which they came turning them into sentimental nonsense? What about Walt Disney himself? Was he a brilliant artist who created wonderful characters and worlds? Was he an anti-Semitic perfectionist who peddled mindless drivel to the masses?




Neal Gabler's comprehensive biography of Disney gives us both sides to his character: the creative innovator and the driven perfectionist. Like many people, he was neither good nor bad and Gabler gives us this multifaceted look at him.




No matter what we feel about Disney and his creations, what can be agreed upon is that they are pure escapism. Whether you ride the rides at the Disney park, watch your favorite animated feature for the hundredth time, or laugh at the antics of Mickey Mouse, Donald Duck, and their friends you are transported to another vibrant, clean, beautiful, and hopeful world. This theme of escapism is not coincidental. In fact, Gabler’s book shows that this was a theme that Disney had been looking for his whole life.




Even though Disney was born in Chicago in 1901, he and his family moved to Marceline, Missouri when he was four. Even though Disney's father was a hard taskmaster, he had an idyllic childhood in Marceline. Gabler’s writing showed Disney’s childhood years as one of playing with friends, studying at school, and exploring nature. Disney would return to his nostalgic feelings about Marceline and recreate that childhood town or towns just like it in movies like So Dear To My Heart and Pollyanna and on the Main Street U.S.A. section at Disneyland.




Disney's early career showed the beginnings of his tremendous talent and his detached nature. He created early characters like Oswald The Lucky Rabbit, the precursor to his later characters. One of his most creative early works were the Alice Comedies, which depicted a live-action girl interacting with animated characters.

Unfortunately, those early years also taught Disney a lesson about betrayal. Charles Mintz, one of Disney's colleagues signed a contract with Universal Pictures giving him the rights to Oswald and taking Disney out of the loop. This moment would become the groundwork for Disney's guarded personality and suspicions towards his employees.




Disney's desire for escape and imagination not only came into creating his characters but in remembering how they were created. He often told the story that he created Mickey Mouse during a train ride in which he drew a mouse figure and suggested the name Mortimer for the little fellow. His wife, Lillian, didn't care for the name and suggested Mickey instead. The truth is more prosaic than the legend. Actually Mickey was created and named during a brainstorming session between Disney and his animators in which they suggested various animals and settled on a mouse.

Despite the dispute in his creation, Mickey became a success after the release of his first sound cartoon, Steamboat Willie. The popularity of the character was also helped by the original Mickey Mouse Club in which children were invited to attend screenings of the cartoon shorts as well as the merchandise with Mickey plastered all over the place. (Proving that Disney like the company after him would be an expert on marketing and commercializing his characters.)



Despite the perception of Disney and his company becoming conservative and formulaic, the book reveals Disney's willingness to take risks and innovate his creations, particularly during the early years. One of his most famous examples was in making Snow White and the Seven Dwarves, his first feature length animated film. Many thought that no one would sit through a feature length cartoon. Disney and his animators tried unique approaches to animating the movie such as using a multiplane camera to provide background detail to the landscape and rotoscoping (filming live action humans and animating over that image) to capture facial styles and features. He also improved upon the original story by providing names and personalities to the seven dwarves and offering dark visuals such as a terrified Snow White running through the woods where hallucinations frighten her and the beautiful Wicked Queen using ingredients like a scream of fright, an old hag’s cackle, and the dark of night for a magic potion to turn her into an old peddler. Disney’s first animated feature was such a success and pleased him so well that to the end of his life, he considered Snow White and Mary Poppins as the only two features he considered perfect.




Besides his pleasure for Mary Poppins on a technical level including combining live action and animation in the scene where Mary, her friend, Bert, and her charges, Jane and Michael Banks go
on a “Jolly Holiday” through a chalk drawing of the countryside, Mary Poppins also touched Disney on a personal level. He identified with George Banks, the father who is unable to spend time with his children and regretted it in the end because Disney did not spend as much time with his wife, Lillian and daughters, Diane and Sharon as much as he liked. Disney also loved the Sherman Brothers song, “Feed the Birds”, a moving song about an old bird woman feeding birds outside St. Paul’s Cathedral who urges people to give money to feed the birds for “tuppence a bag.” He loved the song so much that whenever he met with the brothers, all he would have to say is, “Play it” and they knew which song he wanted to hear.




Sometimes the risks didn't always pay off. When Disney created the movie Fantasia, he intended it to be a continuing project of animated shorts put to classical music much like they already did with the Silly Symphony shorts. The movie would then be updated every few years with new segments. He also wanted to make the movie a full sensory experience by inserting odors into the theaters including floral, gunpowder, saltwater and other scents. Unfortunately despite Disney's ambitions for the project, Fantasia tanked in its initial release discontinuing his proposed ongoing project idea for the movie until 1999 when his company released Fantasia 2000. Many children were reportedly bored by the music, parents either objected to the animation segments or felt that they were inappropriate for children. Classical movie buffs, including Igor Stravinsky whose piece “Rite of Spring” was used in the movie (and whose “Firebird Suite” would be used for Fantasia 2000) thought that Disney's animated segments distorted the music’s original styles. Disney took this failure as a personal blow. It's a shame that Disney didn't live long enough to see the hippy generation give Fantasia a new life as an ultimate visual experience just as they did with Alice in Wonderland, which also similarly tanked upon its initial release. Both Fantasia and Alice in Wonderland obtained cult followings and then later received the critical and commercial success that they originally had been denied proving that sometimes Disney's vision wasn't always wrong, just far ahead of his time.




Gabler also explores Disney's darker nature with great detail. Despite giving a warm welcoming persona, in truth he was very guarded and standoffish to his employees. He wasn't above showing preferential treatment to animators who had been with him from the beginning or that he favored including his legendary “Nine Old Men” such as Ollie Johnston, Milt Kahl, Ward Kimball, and Woolie Reitherman. He considered them friends and would laugh and joke with them and approve of their ideas for scenes and characters (making it perfectly clear that his word was the final say.).

However, he wouldn't have as much camaraderie with other animators like Freddie Moore (who had been fired by the company twice.) and many of the artists that did the lesser known work such as in-betweeners and clean up. (Those who didn't draw the initial characters but went scene by scene frame by frame to make sure the characters and scenes were uniform and mistake free.) This hierarchy created dissension in the ranks as many who were not in Disney's favor feared his criticism and wrath. He often made public examples of them either in the studio or in the Sweatbox where they watched the rushes. Many of the animators who weren't in Disney's favor either quit in fury or were outright dismissed.




This “With me or against me” attitude was particularly noticeable during the Animator’s Strike of 1941 in which a group of animators led by Art Babbit campaigned to unionize Disney's animation team. Disney was an ardent anti-Unionist and refused. While the strikers and the corporate office eventually came to a negotiation, Babbit resigned and Disney considered him a traitor to the end of his life.




The strike and Disney's mistrust of some of his employees created a fear of Communism in him. Disney was a “friendly witness” to the House of Un-American Activities and wasn't above naming names based on nothing more than mere speculation. Unfortunately Disney's staunch anti-Union and anti-Communism stance as well as the images in some of his works (such as Jim Crow in Dumbo, the Big Bad Wolf impersonating a Jewish peddler in the Three Little Pigs, and the movie, The Song of the South which had been so criticized by the NAACP and other groups that Walt Disney Studios still refuses to re-release it in any form) led to accusations that Disney was both racist and anti-Semitic, accusations that Gabler dismissed.

Gabler cited that Disney hired both Jewish and African-American employees and had close friends that were both. At most Gabler writes that Disney could have been guilty of being “racially insensitive” as so many people in Hollywood were at the time by using stereotypical characters for cheap laughs and making inappropriate remarks. Another proof of Disney not being anti-Semitic Gabler believes could also be seen in his other works particularly the World War II propaganda cartoons. The darkest one (among the darkest animated works the Disney company produced even to this day), Education for Death comes down hard on Nazi anti-Semitic policies by depicting a young Aryan boy destroying others and ultimately bringing about his own destruction because of them.




Gabler also explored how the public persona of Walt Disney as the warm family-friendly benevolent creator and works was both a virtue and a prison to him and his company. This even started at the beginning with Mickey Mouse. In the original shorts, Mickey was a mischievous troublemaker who often played pranks on his adversaries. However as his popularity grew, Mickey shifted towards a heroic nice guy making him seem dull and bland in comparison to his colleagues the temperamental Donald Duck and the clumsy Goofy. Donald even eclipsed Mickey in popularity because audience found his flaws more relateable rather than Mickey's goody-two-shoes character. (In fact one of Mickey’s most popular cartoons The Sorcerer's Apprentice shows Mickey reverting back to his more mischievous persona by using magic to make a broom come to life and gather water to disastrous results.)




Walt Disney himself would suffer from the strain of maintaining a clean cut personality that he had honed by the 1960’s. This personality and his desire to churn out wholesome family films became a straightjacket that he couldn't quite break free from.

By the 1950’s, Disney's cartoons were no longer daring or original despite or perhaps because he also created Disneyland (which Gabler considered Disney's escape of all escapes.) and such shows as Davy Crockett and the Mickey Mouse Club. Disney instead seemed corny, stodgy, and emblematic of the safe middle-class America. Instead during that time the true animation innovators came out of Hanna-Barbera with Tom and Jerry, Warner Bros. With Loony Tunes, and Dr. Seuss with Gerald McBoing Boing, all of which claimed Academy Awards for Animated Short Subjects (which used to be a lock for Disney and his crew.). According to Gabler, when Disney saw To Kill a Mockingbird, he reacted with envy saying, “We should have done that.” However, he knew that the image that he created for the people would never permit him to make a dramatic film about rape and racial tension. It wasn't until Disney released Mary Poppins in 1964 and made plans for his EPCOT, community of tomorrow (which became Walt Disney World) that Walt Disney retained some of that original magical spark that had eluded him when he became formulaic.




Even though Disney died in 1967, his company still continues to be both loved and loathed by many. Those who say that the company deviated from Disney's vision (or saying he is rolling in his grave or would be upset) are missing the point. The company that Walt Disney left behind is just like he was. They are innovative in style but with conventional storylines. They are wish-fulfillment and formulaic. They are creative in giving us memorable characters and commercial by throwing merchandise at us. They are unafraid to be different by coming to television, creating adult films, adding new facets to the company, shifting from traditional to computer generation, and are willing to adapt for the subsequent generations, but they also peddle in escape and entertainment. They are and have always been exactly what Walt Disney wanted them to be.

Weekly Reader: Hidden Figures: The American Dream and the Untold Story of the Black Women Mathematicians Who Helped Win The Space Race by Margot Lee Shetterly; A Wonderful True Story of A Group of Brilliant Trailblazing African-American Women

Weekly Reader: Hidden Figures: The American Dream and the Untold Story of the Black Women Mathematicians Who Helped Win The Space Race by Margot Lee Shetterly; A Wonderful True Story of A Group of Brilliant Trailblazing African-American Women


By Julie Sara Porter


Bookworm Reviews





Without the brilliant minds of Dorothy Vaughan, Mary Jackson, Katherine Johnson, and the other African-American female mathematicians in the West Computer division of NASA, it's very doubtful that the Americans would have made it out of Earth's lowest hemisphere let alone into Space and ultimately the Moon.


Margot Lee Shetterly’s best selling biography, Hidden Figures: The American Dream and the Untold Story of the Black Women Mathematicians Who Helped Win The Space Race which became the Academy Award nominated film Hidden Figures pays these women a debt long owed. They are written to be courageous, brilliant women who were able to break through racial and gender barriers and contribute to these important moments in American history.





The exciting opportunities for these women came in the late ‘30’s when NASA was the National Advisory Committee for Aeronautics (NACA) when studying airplanes was the goal. The superiors realized that there were plenty of female mathematicians that they could recruit to create trajectories and figures for the planes to travel. These women were called computers as they computed these large sums in their heads and provided solutions based on the data they used. Interestingly enough this assumption that women would be the best at calculating these figures runs contrary to the modern offensive stereotype that women and girls can't “do math and science,” a stereotype that many in the STEM fields have been trying to counter. The careers of the women in this book should serve as an inspiration for any girl or woman to aspire to become mathematicians and engineers themselves.





The other door that opened was in 1941 when after prodding by A. Philip Randolph, the head of the largest black labor union, the Roosevelt Administration declared Executive Order 8802 ordering the desegregation of the defense industry and Executive Order 9346 the Fair Employment Practices Committee to monitor economic inclusion. All this meant that African-Americans were permitted to work in defense projects to help fight for their country.





One of the first recruits was Dorothy Vaughan, a former math teacher. Even though she and the other African-American female recruits were segregated to the west side of the Langley offices thereby dubbed the “West Computers,” Vaughan was able to compute her figures accurately. She was also able to take charge of the other computers so that when their former supervisor suffered a nervous breakdown and had to be institutionalized, Vaughan seamlessly stepped in to take her place as the Chief Supervisor of the West Computer division.


Vaughan also proved to be adaptable to changing circumstances. When NACA transformed into NASA and the focus changed to space exploration, Vaughan studied the potential for rocket travel. Then when the human computers changed over to electronic computing, Vaughan spent some time in night school studying computer programming and languages to stay ahead of her field.





Another brilliant woman in this group was Mary Jackson. She learned the benefit of making powerful alliances. A Girl Scout troop leader and mother who always tried to give the children in her neighborhood pride in themselves and their race, Jackson was derided by the white engineers. After one particular incident, she stormed off in fury and told her troubles to Kazmierz Czarnecki, the assistant section head of the Supersonic Pressure Tunnel. Czarnecki invited Jackson to work with him. Jackson earned her position by demonstrating her engineering skills.


She also was able to rise from the title of “mathematician” to “engineer”, a feat rarely accomplished by any of the woman working at Langley let alone the African-American women. The “Engineer” title meant more money, prestige, and recognition for Jackson's services.





By far the most famous of the West Computers was Katherine Coleman Goble Johnson. She balanced her role as a widowed mother of three, a romance with 2nd Lt. Jim Johnson, and her work as a mathematician and West Computer. Her research into analytic geometry impressed many of the white male engineers who promoted her to work directly under them. She also showed extraordinary persistence such as continuing to ask her supervisors if she could attend meetings to the point where they allowed her to attend them just so she would stop asking. Another sign of her intelligence and persistence was in receiving credit for her research. When Ted Skopinski transferred to Houston, his former supervisor ordered him to finish his research. He suggested that Johnson complete the research since “she did most of it anyway.” Not only did Johnson finish the research, but she received credit and authorship, a feat not accomplished by many other women in her field.


Johnson also had a reputation for accuracy in her calculations so much so that she was willing to argue with others if she discovered a flaw in the numbers. She calculated the trajectory for Alan Shepard's flight into.space.


Her reputation for genius and accurate calculations reached the ears of astronaut, John Glenn, who planned to orbit Earth. He asked for her specifically and said that he would not fly unless Johnson verified the calculations. After Glen’s historic flight, Johnson also contributed calculations for future space flights such as Apollo 11’s trip to the Moon.





Dorothy Vaughan, Mary Jackson, and Katherine Johnson showed that with intelligence, courage, and persistence racial and gender barriers can not only be broken. They can be shattered beyond repair and anyone can be recognized for their achievements, no matter their race or gender.

Weekly Reader: The Scarlet Sisters: Sex, Suffrage, and Scandal in the GIlded Age by Myra McPherson; An Entertaining Biography of Two Memorable, But Naughty Sisters

Weekly Reader: The Scarlet Sisters: Sex, Suffrage, and Scandal in the Gilded Age by Myra McPherson: An Entertaining Biography of Two Memorable But Naughty Sisters

By Julie Sara Porter,

Bookworm Reviews

Spoilers: If Laurel Thatcher Ulrich is right that “well-behaved women seldom make history,” then Victoria Woodhull and Tennessee Claflin certainly made it. Myra McPherson’s winning biography tells and excellent and entertaining book about two sisters who lived life according to their own terms and proved to be very memorable colorful women who yes indeed made history.

Victoria Woodhull and Tennessee Claflin made a lot of firsts in their lives. They were the first woman to start a Wall Street brokerage. Woodhull was the first woman to run for President in the United States and was the first woman to address a United States Congressional committee. Claflin ran for Congress and became an honorary colonel for an all-black regiment. They also were the subjects of much scandal in their lives. They were Spiritualists and strong advocates for Free Love, Freedom of Speech, and Women’s Suffrage. They were also frequent targets because of their active love lives and their willingness to talk about it.

The Claflin Sisters came from scandal naturally. Their father, Buck was a snake oil salesman who put the sisters on stage to conduct séances and communicate with the dead for paying customers. (Despite their shady early connections with Spiritualism, the sisters particularly Claflin remained ardent Spiritualists for the rest of their lives. They always claimed that talking to the spirits helped get them through their difficult childhood with their idle abusive father). They also had several siblings mostly sisters who were involved in unhappy marriages and lived off of Victoria and Tennessee’s earnings. Despite the bad upbringing the sisters spent a great deal of time telling people lies about their father.
They said that he was “once a successful merchant and possessor of a large fortune who lost money in speculation.”  McPherson writes that the Claflin Sisters deceived people about their background in an attempt to gain respectability, a respectability that was often challenged by their avaricious and obnoxious family.

Like the rest of their family, the Claflin Sisters were not ones to live by rules and societal conventions. This was particularly noticeable in their sexual relationships with men. Tennessee Claflin was the lover of Cornelius Vanderbilt, who helped the duo finance their brokerage. Victoria Claflin had an early marriage to Canning Woodhull, an alcoholic doctor but she was a believer in Free Love so also had an affair with Col. James Blood, a Civil War hero. Though they were the targets of suspicion, ridicule, and damaging gossip the sisters publically acknowledged their lifestyle. Woodhull proudly declared, “Yes, I am a Free Lover,” in a public trial. The two hid no secrets about their romantic relationships in public and in their periodical, Woodhull & Claflin’s Weekly.  While many would argue about the Sisters’ private lives, they were certainly true to themselves and their beliefs.

Because of their very open lifestyle, the Sisters made many enemies. Even though they were ardent suffragists, many of the leaders in Women’s suffrage did not care for them. The conservative Lucy Stone head of the American Women’s Suffrage Association was appalled by their behavior.  Susan B. Anthony, leader of the more liberal National Women’s Suffrage Association, initially befriended the sisters impressed by their brokerage. She later became a mortal enemy when they threatened to reveal the private lives of many of the suffragists. Later Anthony told someone “Both sisters are regarded as lewd and indecent. I would advise against any contact.”

However they also had supporters. Elizabeth Cady Stanton supported the duo’s Free Love lifestyle even at the point of arguing with her best friend, Anthony. McPherson said that Stanton’s friendship with the Sisters and Anthony’s dislike of them was one of the issues that caused friction in the suffrage giants’ friendship. They also had a steady friend in escaped slave/author, Frederick Douglass. In fact when Victoria Woodhull ran for President in 1873, she selected Douglass as her running mate, a selection that he did not support, opting for re-electing Ulysses S. Grant instead. However, there were no hard feelings and when Woodhull and Douglass reunited, Douglass said he treated her “politely and respectfully-and (Woodhull) departed not displeased with her call.”

The friendship and enemies that the Sisters make becomes a Who’s Who of the Gilded Age and explored their relationship with the world around them. McPherson isn’t afraid to put the dark sides of the sisters and their friends and enemies, reflecting how people lived and strove to change the world around them.

Rev. Henry Ward Beecher was the sister’s worst enemy. The pastor who was also the brother of Uncle Tom’s Cabin author, Harriet Beecher Stowe and anti-suffrage advocate, Catherine Beecher spoke out against the sisters on his pulpit. He frequently spoke against women’s suffrage and Free Love holding the Sisters as examples of the decadence and debauchery in the 19^th century.

However Beecher’s private life was hardly that of the saint that he projected to his parishioners. He had an affair with Elizabeth “Lib” Tilton, the wife of his parishioner Theodore Tilton. Beecher and Tilton maintained a secret love affair for years that was eventually exposed by Woodhull and Claflin in their paper. Woodhull and Claflin also exposed “The Masked French Ball” a gathering attended by financier, L.C. Challis in which men paraded and forced themselves onto young women. (While Woodhull and Claflin attended the Ball and saw the encounters themselves, they covered up their involvement by telling the story from an imaginary insiders’ perspective.) They also spoke about legalizing prostitution and defended women who had been forced into such a life and instead felt that the men not the prostitutes should be held accountable for their actions.

In exposing men, like Challis and Beecher, who criticized and attacked others for their private lives, but lived sordid lives themselves, the two revealed their attack on hypocrisy. They also showed that they were more than capable of defending themselves against powerful men by proving themselves to be just as cunning as they are, but more open about themselves. They wrote in their paper: “(Beecher) helped to maintain for these many years that very social slavery under which he was chafing, and which he was secretly revolting both in thought and practice….he has, in a word, consented and still consented to being a hypocrite.”

 Challis and Beecher later sued the Sisters for libel leading to a lengthy trial in which Woodhull and Claflin were held up as “whores” but also as symbols of Freedom of Speech and the Press. They were vilified by Beecher and his powerful allies. The scandal plus dwindling finances (partly caused by the Financial Bank Panic of 1873 and also because they lost their allies) cased the Sisters to suffer economic strain.

The most disappointing aspects to the book take place after the two renounced their earlier stances and settled into marriages into English aristocracy. They insisted that they were never advocates for Free Love and their words were taken out of context. While their actions betrayed their earlier philosophies about living their lives independently and free from conventions, these later actions showed their chameleon-like nature to suit their lives as they saw fit.

Despite their conventional marriages, the two still maintained their support for women’s suffrage and supported the more dramatic protests from the English suffragists like Emmeline Pankhurst such as hunger strikes, riots, and publicity stunts. Tennessee Claflin and Victoria Woodhull died in 1920 and 1927 respectively outliving most of their enemies and contemporaries and were one of the few early suffragists to see women get the vote in Great Britain and United States.

McPherson wrote” (Woodhull and Claflin) belonged to the ages, which must now puzzle over and debate their worth, which continues to change with passing generations and shifting attitudes about women.” Victoria Woodhull and Tennessee Claflin were outrageous, scandalous, and free spirited, but they were always memorable and always colorful. Surely they were not well-behaved but surely, in their own fashion, they made history.