by Kate Walbert
First published 2009
Dorothy Townsend lies dying in England in 1915, having starved herself for the suffragist cause. She was among the first women at Cambridge University, and her radical choice reverberates through generations of her female descendants. Her daughter Evie becomes a chemistry professor at Barnard College and remains unmarried throughout her career in mid-century America. Evie's daughter, also named Dorothy, channels her grief over losing a son into defiant activism, repeatedly breaking the prohibition against photographing dead soldiers returned from Iraq to Dover Air Force Base. Dorothy Barrett's own daughters, both young professionals, feel embarrassed by their mother's protests and shocked when she abandons their father after five decades of marriage. Each generation of women struggles to define their place in a changing world, carrying forward the unresolved tensions of what Victorian society termed the woman question. The novel traces how one woman's ultimate sacrifice creates ripples that shape her family for a century.
Genres: american-fiction, 20th-century, feminism, biographical-fiction, 21st-century, activism, family-drama, academic
Vibes: emotional, intimate, thought-provoking
Tropes: family-saga, generational-saga, multi-generational
Setting: Cambridge University, Barnard College, England, Iraq, Dover Air Force Base
Period: 1915, Mid-20th Century, 21st Century
256 pages · Hardcover · Scribner