Novel looks at a woman’s struggle in a time women had no rights

Change takes time, sometimes decades, sometimes centuries, sometimes millennia. It has been that way with the status of women. Today we celebrate the right to vote, we edge toward equal pay for equal work, we press against harassment and abuse. Headlines, women’s rallies, International Women’s Day, #MeToo point this evolution out nearly every day. But what about earlier times? From where have we come to get here?

In1769, America adopted English traditions that denied women the right to own property, or conduct business, or keep their own earnings. By the time prairie settlements were beginning to bloom a hundred years later, that had not changed; women still had no legal right to own property, or keep their earnings. Their spouses had that control. Their spouses also held sole rights to their homes, the clothes on their backs, even claim to their own children.

But things began to shift, if only slowly. In 1848, Elizabeth Cady Stanton organized the first gathering devoted to discussing women’s rights. But it wasn’t until 1884 that the first woman, Belva Lockwood, was allowed to practice law. It took another thirty-two years for the first woman to be elected to Congress (one year before women were granted the right to vote).

What, then, was the life of a woman before the turn of the Twentieth century? How would an abandoned, penniless mother with no other family survive in the Nebraska of the 1880s? It was a time when there was no aid for homeless women and children, no Salvation Army, no church charities or shelters.

In her new novel, Jeannie Burt examines this question. The Seasons of Doubt is a compelling literary look at the strife of a lone mother in late 1880s when the American prairie was being settled.

When Mary Harrington’s husband abandons her and their son in their sod home one freezing winter, she is jettisoned into a quest to survive. Her story plays out in the small settlement of Cozad, Nebraska where she hopes to find work. However, she cannot be paid without her husband’s permission, but permission is out of her reach. It is here, with courage and dogged persistence, that Mary must survive and ensure that her boy grows to manhood.

Evoking Willa Cather, Burt’s style is rich in detail of the time and the struggles of the people on whose backs America was built. The mortar of a single mother’s crusade to survive and raise her son alone holds the story together.

Dr. Marilyn Peterson, Associate Professor and historian says that The Seasons of Doubt, “…is the realism of our legacies, with our generation living the dreams of our ancestors, who came to Nebraska as homesteaders, searching for ‘the better life.’”

The Seasons of Doubt will be released May 18, 2018.

To request a complimentary review copy of The Season of Doubt, contact:

Pat Correnti, Publicity, Muskrat Press                                                                                            patcorrenti@muskratpress.com                                                                                          503-683-1612                                                                                                                                      For media information see https://muskratpress.com/newsroom/