by Louis Menand
First published 2024
On July 3, 1870, Elizabeth Tilton reveals to her husband her secret relationship with Henry Ward Beecher, Brooklyn's celebrated pastor and political powerhouse. Beecher commands the most prestigious church in Brooklyn Heights while championing abolition and women's suffrage. His presidential ambitions and moral authority make him untouchable. When Beecher attempts to bury the scandal, Elizabeth faces a choice between silence and truth. The confession ignites a chain reaction through America's reform circles. Susan B. Anthony and Elizabeth Cady Stanton whisper the news through suffragist networks. Victoria Woodhull, the radical advocate for free love, transforms private shame into public warfare against elite hypocrisy. She weaponizes the affair to challenge marriage itself. The resulting trials split the nation's most progressive voices and expose the gap between public virtue and private desire in an America struggling to define its moral future.
Genres: literary-fiction, american-fiction, historical-fiction, 20th-century, american, 19th-century
Vibes: intimate, suspenseful, thought-provoking
Tropes: enemies-to-lovers, unreliable-narrator
Setting: Brooklyn, America
Period: 1870
264 pages · Paperback · McNally Editions
Content warnings: sexual-content