![]() The book won first place in the 2015 Chaucer Awards for Historical Fiction. ![]() The author also has notes to explain some of her choices in constructing her narrative the way she did. There’s an afterword by the author that provides a small slice of what happened to Victoria after the novel ends. The novel begins with Victoria’s childhood in Homer, Ohio, and ends with her January 1873 speech at Cooper Union in New York City. Evelina chooses to depict Victoria’s father Buck as physically but not sexually abusive which is closer to the historical record but disputed by Victoria’s siblings. The one area where the novel diverges from Goldsmith’s interpretation is on the topic of sexual abuse. In reality Josie Mansfield would’ve been 9 years old or younger during the time Evelina has Mansfield inform Victoria that her son is an “idiot.” It would be more accurate to say the novelist adheres closely to Barbara Goldsmith. ![]() ![]() The novelist claims her book adheres closely to history but that’s difficult to believe when she has an adult Josie Mansfield performing with Victoria in San Francisco around 1855-1856. This novel, like many of the recent novels, appears to be inspired the most by Barbara Goldsmith’s biography, “Other Powers,” which is the most inaccurate of all the Woodhull biographies. ![]()
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