The Hope Chest

In the early 1900s, choices for women were limited. For one, women were expected to marry. This was the case with Violet Mayhew's older sister. Chloe, a pioneer for women's rights, was at odds with her parents. Not wanting that fate, she leaves for New York and never returns. Her parents seemed relieved Chloe left, but Violet wasn't. Three years after her sister's disappearance, Violet finds some letters in her mother's drawer addressed to her from Chloe. After Violet reads the letters, she decides to find her sister. She begins in New York, but her sister has already left. Now she must travel down south where she will be forced to hang out with what her parents termed as the "wrong kind of people". In the end, she'd make up her own mind. This is a wonderful historical fiction book about the beginnings of women's rights and the struggles to get the freedom we have today.

I am taking children's literature at our local community college and we had to find a recently written historical fiction book to read and comment on so off the library I went. While I'm not big into reading, I had a hard time putting this book down. The author did a fantastic job at bringing history to life. Never did I feel the story was forced. Never did I feel the facts were boring. Never did I feel the author was trying to make the book authentic by adding in unnecessary information about life in the 1920's. The book just flowed. I learned so much about the passage in Tennessee. Really, a teacher could do an entire unit for weeks and weeks on this book. Awesome read!

I have to admit that I approached this novel with a bit of trepidation, even though it was by the author of the wonderful A Pickpocket's Tale: "The history of the Nineteenth Amendment" sounded like it had potential to be a bit on the dry side, to say the least. Instead I found myself fascinated by a unique perspective on a little-known chapter in U.S. history: The ratification of the Nineteenth Amendment by the Tennessee legislature in August 1920, as seen from the perspective of two children. The two girls, Violet and Myrtle, are tough and independent kids who would fit into the world of Harry Potter or Avatar; they are not passive recipients of information doled out by grown-ups, but go out on their own to discover what's going on -- and, if necessary, to change things. They travel on their own to Nashville, seeing enough of their world to make the America of 1920, with all its flaws and wonders, come to life. Along the way, naturally, they encounter a variety of entertaining characters -- amid all the humor and adventure, readers may not even realize that they're learning something.

Did you know that the decades-long battle for women suffrage in the U.S. was won in Nashville, Tennessee? That the suffragists were deeply divided on issues of race and civil rights? Or that as late as 1920 the U.S. government. in the person of the legendary J. Edgar Hoover, continued to persecute peace activists who had spoken out against U.S. participation in the First World War? Neither did I. Neither, at the beginning of the story, do the protagonists, Violet and Myrtle. But they find out, on an exciting journey through New York and Washington D.C. to Nashville, during a week that changes U.S. history.

I've given copies of this book and A Pickpocket's Tale to all my nieces!