Tenacious. Who me?
My heroine, Allie Baldwin, in my historical romance, The Unforgettable Miss Baldwin, launching Tuesday, September 10th, has a passion – to help win the vote for women.
That’s not news, thirty-four years later women got the vote. But in 1886, a battle that had been going on for almost fifty years was denied over and over and over again.
As a reporter for the New York Sentinel, the newspaper her father owns, Allie is determined to do her part and attend a rally. Not just any old rally, but a suffrage rally featuring many notable women speakers. Doing her part to help secure the right to vote for women means the world to Allie. She is willing to forego marriage for her work. But she has her work cut out for her. Her father not only disapproves of her going, he threatens not to print anything Allie writes pertaining to the rally.
Allie is made of sterner stuff than that! Her father’s objections don’t stop her. She concots a disguise and makes her way to New York City Hall where more than a hundred women and men have gathered to listen to the suffragettes.
I would have done the same, but it would have been my mother arguing with me. She would have told me to stop this behavior, to grow up, and don’t think of hiding behind a cloak. “If you go,” she would have said, “I’ll find out and you’ll reap the consequences.”
My father was a dearheart, I could do no wrong in his eyes, and most of the time he couldn’t figure out why my mother was so strict with me.
In the 19th century fathers were strict, and mothers raised the children, cooked, did the wash, cleaned the house, and even chopped the wood for the baking oven.
By the time I was born, the nineteenth amendment had passed just fifteen years before, and women’s lives had indeed changed. I had a working mother, a mother who worked outside the home and made her own money. My mother wouldn’t have allowed me to go to a rally but she benefited from women like Allie.
This is why we shouldn’t take the vote for granted. It is one of our most important rights, don’t you think so?
Votes for Women
Recently, tennis trailblazer, Billy Jean King spoke at the United States Tennis Open on opening night at the Billy Jean King National Tennis Center, Flushing Meadow, Corona Park, NY. She said, “In 1920, women got the right to vote, and while we’ve come a long way, there is still so much more to be done until we truly have equality for all.”
I hope there are many more Allie Baldwin’s out there, willing to keep working for equality in all arenas.
“Battle of the Sexes” directors Jonathan Drayton and Valerie Faris had no fears about re-creating a 44-year-old stunt tennis match between Billie Jean King (played by Emma Stone) and unapologetic chauvinist Bobby Riggs (played by Steve Carell).“What’s really interesting about a story that takes place in 1973 is that all those issues have suddenly bubbled up again: equal pay, sexism, gender equality, sexual equality — all these things are live debates again,” screenwriter Simon Beaufoy told TheWrap’s Steve Pond in a video interview at the Toronto Film Festival.
My pin! Billie Jean changed scads of things, she’s like my Allie.
With the approach of the 100th Year Anniversary of Woman Suffrage – there will be many events around the country to celebrate and educate. Lockwood-Mathews Mansion in CT is planning several, including Women in Office and the 19th Amendment celebration and talk by CT’s Secretary of the State Denise W. Merrill on Sunday, Sept. 8, 2019, 2-4pm. For more information and to purchase tickets, click here. Secretary Merrill’s talk will be followed by a self-guided tour of the museum’s featured exhibition, From Corsets to Suffrage: Victorian Women Trailblazers, as well as tea and light refreshments.
Coincidently, I just had the most delightful visit from Sharon Pistilli, who is running with three other candidates to make the town where I live, Fairfield, even better. I will remember to vote on Tuesday, Nov 5, 2019, from 6am-8pm. It’s my right and my privilege.
The Unforgettable Miss Baldwin is available for pre-order on Amazon and iBooks, Kobo, Banes and Noble Nook. Order now and the book will appear in your e-reading device on launch day, Tuesday, Sept 10, 2019.
Read about the passionate, tenacious Allie Baldwin:
Opposites attract in this gilded age historical romance when a young American suffragette eschews marriage until a handsome detective is hired to protect her from a dangerous stalker.
