\tWomen’s Crusader reveals the untold tale of romance and grief that launched Kate Beecher on a new path as an advocate for American women in the first half of the nineteenth century. Biographer R. Lee Wilson combed through unpublished letters, manuscripts, and diary entries to discover the secrets of Kate and Alexander Fisher, an unlikely couple. Kate was a fun-loving extrovert, while Alexander was an introverted math prodigy and brilliant Yale professor. But they were brought together by piece of her published poetry and their joint love of music. After a tragic shipwreck tore them apart, Kate’s life dramatically shifted focus. She waged a battle against misogyny to help provide women with the education they deserved. Compelling and meticulously researched, Women’s Crusader is the inspiring turning-point story of an important yet little-known woman in US history.
Wilson smartly uses that catastrophe as the spark that fueled Kate’s path to "improve the lives of women through education,” drawing from unpublished letters, historical photographs, and painstaking personal research to sketch a layered story of love, grief, and healing. The result is a tender account of an individual often eclipsed by her younger sister’s fame, a fierce champion for women born out of the mistreatment she suffered by the men in her life: "Kate’s heart was broken. She was tormented by men who tried to analyze her rather than empathize with her. She was hounded by devils, and her faith failed her. She was forlorn, with nowhere to turn," Wilson writes.
The balm for her grief takes shape in Kate’s formation of schools for women, including the Hartford Female Seminary and Western Female Institute, as well as her foray into home economics, with a best-selling book, Treatise on Domestic Economy, penned in 1841. At a time when women were largely credited for their domestic roles only, Kate features here as a “powerful stick of dynamite” for women’s progress, an ardent believer that women could “change America for the better.” History fans will be captivated.
Takeaway: Riveting sketch of Catharine Beecher’s championship of women’s education.
Comparable Titles: Kathryn Kish Sklar's Catharine Beecher, Dorothy Wickenden’s The Agitators.
Production grades
Cover: A
Design and typography: A-
Illustrations: A
Editing: A
Marketing copy: A
