The Renegade Queen

by Eva Flynn

Overview

The award-winning, richly researched novel that tells the astonishing story of Victoria Woodhull's journey from poverty to Wall Street Queen and Presidential candidate.

It's 1869 and Victoria has a choice to make. She can stay in an abusive marriage and continue to work as a psychic, or she can take the offer of support from handsome Civil War general James Blood and set about to turn society upside down. Victoria chooses revolution.

But revolutions are expensive, and Victoria needs money. James introduces Victoria to one of the wealthiest men in America--Commodore Vanderbilt. Along with her loose and scandalous sister, Tennessee, Victoria manipulates Vanderbilt and together they conspire to crash the stock market""and profit from it. Victoria then parlays her fortune into the first female-owned brokerage firm.

When her idol Susan B. Anthony publishes scandalous rumors about Victoria's past, Victoria enters into a fierce rivalry with Susan to control the women's movement. James supports Victoria's efforts despite his deep fears that she may lose more than the battle. She might lose part of herself.

Victoria starts her own newspaper, testifies to Congress, and even announces her candidacy for President. But when Victoria adopts James's radical ideas and free love beliefs, she ignites new, bruising, battles with Susan B. Anthony and the powerful Reverend Henry Beecher. These skirmishes turn into an all-out war, with Victoria facing prejudice, prosecution, and imprisonment. Ultimately, Victoria and James face the hardest choice of all: the choice between their country and their love

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780996983204
Publisher:	Omega Press
Publication date:	12/04/2015
Series:	Rebellious Times , #1
Pages:	328
Product dimensions:	5.00(w) x 8.00(h) x 0.73(d)

Editorial Reviews

08/15/2016
Flynn’s fictional portrait of women’s-rights champion Victoria Woodhull, the first woman to run for president of the United States, is a striking and sobering depiction of a progressive and controversial figure nearly lost in history. After a childhood corrupted by incest, Victoria marries Dr. Canning Woodhull in 1853 Ohio, at age 14. Canning provides his child bride with an escape from her father, until his addictions destroy their marriage and his career. A practicing psychic, Victoria becomes the breadwinner, and they settle in New York with their children. There, in the late 1860s, Victoria falls in love with Colonel James Blood, but the specifics of her divorce and remarriage are unclear. She campaigns for women’s suffrage and legal protections in marriage, divorce, and business, and she later embraces Marxism; she becomes rich as the first female stockbroker, advocating for women with noted suffragette Susan B. Anthony. Victoria’s life as a “free lover” is tinder for her enemies, who brand her “Mrs. Satan,” and she lands in New York’s worst prison on trumped-up obscenity charges. Flynn does not consider Victoria innocent and convincingly suggests that Victoria’s stubborn defiance harms her children and destroys her relationship with James. Flynn’s Victoria is exciting and ahead of her time, and the novel sheds light on her remarkable life. (BookLife)

Publishers Weekly

2016-03-31
A fictional account examines one of the most notorious women in 19th-century America. In this debut novel, Flynn hews closely to historical facts as she tells the story of Victoria Woodhull, a suffragist and reformer who worked as a fraudulent clairvoyant, opened a Wall Street brokerage with her sister, spent time in jail on obscenity charges, and ran for president in 1872. The book opens with Victoria's abuse-filled childhood, which she escaped through marrying Canning Woodhull at the age of 14. Canning's neglect and morphine addiction eventually lead Victoria to divorce him and marry James Blood, a Civil War veteran depicted as the great passion of her life. (Little is known about Blood, and biographies of Woodhull are contradictory; an author's note addresses the book's adherence to the historical record.) Victoria and James are as passionate about revolution as they are about each other and advocate for Marxism and women's rights, though Victoria's embrace of free love puts her at odds with suffrage leaders Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Susan B. Anthony. Despite their love for each other, Victoria and James learn that moral and policy victories make personal happiness difficult, and Victoria is on her own as she leaves to build a new life in England. Flynn turns a history with no shortage of drama into compelling fiction, with a vivid setting and strong secondary characters, particularly Victoria's unfiltered younger sister and frequent sidekick, Tennessee: "My sister," Tennessee says, "prefers martyrdom. As for me, I do not want the nails in my hands. I have beautiful, smooth hands. Want to feel?" Although the dialogue is occasionally unpolished, Flynn's prose is often insightful, pithily capturing Victoria's defining sense of mission ("Mediocrity's foe and the ugly virgin have joined forces to give the woman the right to vote"). The woman known to the tabloids of her era as "Mrs. Satan" is rendered as both driven and flawed, a fully realized character who will keep readers turning the pages. A multilayered biographical novel that explores the career and scandal of Victoria Woodhull.

Kirkus Reviews