More Than Petticoats: Remarkable North Carolina Women

More Than Petticoats: Remarkable North Carolina Women is a very satisfying book. As the title suggests, it is a collection of profiles of women who contributed to the history of the State of North Carolina through impressive acts of courage and/or years of determined effort. The book opens with the story of Mary Hooks Slocumb, born in 1760, a heroine of the American Revolution, and concludes with the biography of Maggie Axe Wachacha, a Cherokee healer, treaty clerk and midwife who delivered more than 3000 babies before she died in 1993. Between, we meet a dozen other fascinating women who played significant roles in the advancement of North Carolina's social conditions, politics, education and health. Scotti Kent is a strong writer - her spare, evocative prose draws readers in immediately and holds our interest and attention throughout each chapter. That these women's stories were of consistent interest to a reader who has never (yet) set foot in North Carolina is a testimony to not only the admirable qualities of the subjects' lives but also to the strength and clarity of the writing.

In More Than Petticoats, the reader is introduced to fourteen extraordinary and memorable women from North Carolina. Each of this remarkable women were alive at important historical junctions of the state's history ranging from the Revolutionary War, to the Civil War, to the beginning of the 20th Century. These were women who saw reformation all around them and realized that they too could contribute and promote change. There was Emeline Jamison Pigott, a Confederate spy; Mary Martin Sloop, a physician, community leader, and child welfare advocate in the hills of the Blue Ride; Maggie Axe Wachacha, a healer, teacher, and Cherokee leader; Cornelia Phillips Spencer, who helped liberate the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, and eleven others who each directly addressed the challenges of their respective times and places. Their enduring contributions are here chronicled in absorbing and informative biographical sketches, providing a highly recommended addition to women's studies and American history reading lists.