Tomboy Tess wears pants, spits, fights boys and yearns for independence and adventure along the Erie Canal. Beany is the shy daughter of August, a runaway slave who works for Tess’ family. Lucy is the ambitious daughter of a wealthy family who wants to attend college and become a lawyer, but her father expects her to marry one instead. The girls have nothing in common until they become enmeshed in Elizabeth Cady Stanton’s First Woman’s Rights Convention taking root in Seneca Falls. They become friends when Amelia Bloomer takes them under her wing, offering them employment and emotional support at The Lily, her temperance and women’s rights newspaper.
Things turn serious when Tess’ alcoholic and mean-spirited father turns Beany and her mother over to slave catchers. Tess and Lucy team up with Tess’ brother Cooper to free them from jail. This adventure brings about catastrophic consequences and Tess finds herself together with Coop and Beany adrift on a boat in the Erie Canal facing the unknown.
The characters in A Shocking and Unnatural Incident will capture your attention and your heart from the first pages. Georgia Ann Mullen brings the issues leading up to the women’s rights movement to life in this vivid coming-of-age story of friendship set against the backdrop of abolition, temperance and the early Women's Rights Movement.
For more information, please visit the author's website at www.historicalfictionbook.net.
A Shocking and Unnatural Incident
Georgia Ann Mullen
Dog Ear Publishing
ISBN: 978-159858-799-
Available at Ingram, Baker&Taylor, Amazon.com, Barnes&Noble, Borders and fine bookstores everywhere
