Shady Ladies: Nineteen Surprising and Rebellious American Women by Suzann Ledbetter

Title: Shady Ladies: Nineteen Surprising and Rebellious American Women
Author: Suzann Ledbetter
ISBN: 0765308274, Forge Books, 2006
Genre: Biography, Women's History
Rating: B+
Source: Paperback Swap

First Line: "So," I've been asked repeatedly, "what *is* a shady lady?"


Shady Ladies is a series of light and breezy biographies of nineteen 19th century American women who weren't content with the norm. The biographies range from the familiar--Margaret "the Unsinkable Molly" Brown-- to the more obscure, and Ledbetter has done an excellent job in finding women who will whet our appetites for more.

My favorites?

Sara Parton, who left an abusive husband to become a successful novelist under the pen name of Fanny Fern.

Sara Knight Borginnis Bowman, who "stood at least six-two in her stockinged feet and tipped a feed scale at better than two hundred exceedingly top-heavy pounds" and had a tendency to discard husbands whenever she felt like it. Sara rose from camp follower to the proprietor of a "full service hotel" for soldiers during the war with Mexico.

Frances Benjamin Johnston, who was a photojournalist fifty years before they had a name for her profession.

And Lydia Pinkham, who made a fortune with her Vegetable compound. (Before you laugh, how many other elixirs first marketed in 1875 can still be purchased today on Internet drugstore sites?)

Ledbetter clears up misconceptions concerning the more well-known figures, and brings others to life who had been long buried in the sands of time. I love reading about anyone who bucks the trend, and the author provides a bibliography for further reading, which is always a plus.

If you're in the mood for a fast-paced, fascinating account of women who didn't like the status quo, Shady Ladies is the book for you.

To close out this review, I'd like to include a video of how I first became acquainted with Lydia Pinkham as a teenager. I didn't realize this song was really about her!

Addie Clawson, Appalachian Mail Carrier by Julia Taylor Ebel

Title: Addie Clawson, Appalachian Mail Carrier
Author: Julia Taylor Ebel
Artist: Sherry Jensen
ISBN: 1887905677, Parkway Publishers, 2003
Genre: KidLit, Women's History, Biography
Rating: A

First Line: When Addie Clawson took the job of rural mail carrier, folks said it just wasn't right-- a woman doing a man's job.

Addie Clawson got her job in 1936 after earning one of the top three scores on the Civil Service exam, and it was only temporary through the good weather, you understand, because she was a woman. A woman wouldn't be able to handle the floods and snows of the mountains of North Carolina. Addie wore pants and made tongues wag as she drove her Model A Ford along the dirt roads and rode her horse through the really bad patches. She learned to bring along a shovel because she never knew when she'd have to dig herself out of the mud or clear out the snow down to the mailboxes. (Yes, I did mean down.)

Although this book is meant for young children, the text, the art, and the old photographs had me alternately smiling, laughing, or willing myself not to shed a tear. The only thing wrong with this book is the fact that it's too short! Addie Clawson was the type of woman about whom it's a Pure D joy to read. She was smart, she was feisty, she knew the meaning of hard work, she was brave, and she had a heart that would've put a bar of 24 karat gold to shame. (I also have the suspicion that she enjoyed making those strait-laced women's tongues wag, too.)

Addie Clawson worked that temporary job for the next thirty years because no one could do it better. It wouldn't surprise me at all to learn that more than a few of the rural residents of Watauga County shed tears on the day this exemplary woman retired.

I would have.

REVIEW: Mornings on Horseback

Title: Mornings on Horseback
Author: David McCullough
Biography
Rating: A-

First Line: In the year 1869, when the population of New York City had reached nearly a million, the occupants of 28 East 20th Street, a five-story brownstone, numbered six, exclusive of the servants.

Gone are the days when the only things I knew about Theodore Roosevelt were: (1) the Teddy bear was named for him, (2) he was responsible for the Panama Canal, and (3) he was the source of one of my favorite quotes--"Speak softly and carry a big stick." Last year I read Candice Millard's excellent River of Doubt about the last years of Theodore Roosevelt's life. Now I've read David McCullough's Mornings on Horseback about Theodore Roosevelt's childhood. How do I feel about our twenty-sixth president? I greatly admire the man.

McCullough's book takes "Thee" from the age of ten through the age of twenty-seven. As a child, he suffered terribly from recurrent and nearly fatal attacks of asthma. He was not expected to live. His father, the first Theodore Roosevelt, had other plans. One of the strengths of this award-winning book is that we are shown the incredible Roosevelt clan entire. We see how the man who became president could draw on the love, support and strength of those around him.

One of my favorite parts of the book was the family's first trip to Europe, taken in part to get Thee to a better climate for his asthma. Reading the parts of his boyhood diary in which he wrote so enthusiastically about the Swiss Alps, I could see that young boy's wide-eyed wonder. Can you imagine how I felt when, later in the book, they discovered that he could barely see thirty feet in front of his own nose and desperately needed glasses? Putting my near-sighted self in his place I can imagine how much more those glasses would have added to his enjoyment of the Alps. The difference would have been incalculable.

Thee finally started coming into his own when he went to Harvard. He was the typical teenager, with his enthusiasms and affectations, and in some circles he was a laughing stock, but he carried on, keeping sight on the lessons he had learned from his father. Graduated from Harvard, he married the one true love of his life and began a career in politics. By the time he was twenty-seven, he had weathered many tragedies and chosen his life's path.

McCullough brings all this to life and makes it crystal clear just how important a role Theodore Roosevelt's family had in shaping him as a human being and a man. The only part that dragged a bit for me was when Roosevelt began to make his mark in politics. I felt as if I needed a scorecard to keep the political Black Hats and White Hats straight, but the one vision that stayed square before me was that of a young boy, high in the Alps, gazing at the world spread out in front of him and grinning that famous grin.