Synopsis
With revolutionary spirit, two Quaker cousins rebel against tradition.
One cousin is notorious: Alice Paul endures censure and prison to win suffrage for women. She’s a political powerhouse who organizes the first women’s march on Washington and the first pickets in front of the White House. She also obtains ratification of the 19th Amendment and writes the Equal Rights Amendment.
The other is completely unknown: spinster Susanna Parry, whose story of passion and rebellion remains untold until a dusty box of letters is discovered in her attic after her death. The letters reveal young Susanna confronting societal norms and parental control to be with the woman she loves.
This epistolary biography unfolds through the letters: Alice describes youthful pranks at Swarthmore College and settlement house work in New York and England. Susanna’s roommate “E.” writes of forbidden love for her “Wifie.” Young Susanna describes, in humorous detail, her European travels and her time at the Woodbrooke Quaker Centre in England. Older Susanna finds companionship in the poetic letters of a New Woman from her past.
The story of Susanna and Alice emerges: two Quaker rebels – a plucky feminist icon and a retiring philanthropist with a secret – who both struggle to live authentically and, despite some failures, manage to prevail.
