Starting from Seneca Falls

Celebrate the centennial of the Nineteenth Amendment with another historical novel about women's suffrage from the author of The Hope Chest!

Bridie's life has been a series of wrongs. The potato famine in Ireland. Being sent to the poorhouse when her mother's new job in America didn't turn out the way they'd hoped. Becoming an orphan.

And then there's the latest wrong--having to work for a family so abusive that Bridie is afraid she won't survive. So she runs away to Seneca Falls, New York, which in 1848 is a bustling town full of possibility. There, she makes friends with Rose, a girl with her own list of wrongs, but with big dreams, too.

Rose helps Bridie get a job with the strangest lady she's ever met, Mrs. Elizabeth Cady Stanton. Mrs. Stanton is planning a convention to talk about the rights of women. For Bridie and Rose, it's a new idea, that women and girls could have a voice. But they sure are sick of all the wrongs. Maybe it's time to fight for their rights!

KAREN SCHWABACH grew up in upstate New York and lived for many years in Alaska, where she taught ESL in the Yup'ik village of Chefornak. She later taught in the education department at Salem College in North Carolina. She's the author of A Pickpocket's Tale, The Hope Chest, The Storm Before Atlanta, and Starting from Seneca Falls.