Lost Diaries of Elizabeth Cady Stanton: Review

Lost Diaries of Elizabeth Cady Stanton by Sarah Bates

Publisher: Booklocker.com, Inc. (February 15, 2016)
Category: Historical Fiction, Historical Romance
Tour Dates: Oct/Nov, 2016
ISBN: 978-1634910262
ASIN: B01D6YS52G
Available in: Print & ebook, 420 Pages

From award winning author, Sarah Bates, Johnstown, New York, 1823: It is a time when a wife’s dowry, even children, automatically becomes her husband’s property. Slavery is an economic advantage entrenched in America but rumblings of abolition abound.

For Elizabeth Cady to confront this culture is unheard of, yet that is exactly what she does. Before she can become a leader of the women’s rights movement and prominent abolitionist, she faces challenges fraught with disappointment. Her father admires her intellect but says a woman cannot aspire to the goals of men. Her sister’s husband becomes her champion–but secretly wants more. Religious fervor threatens to consume her.

As she faces depression and despair, she records these struggles and other dark confidences in diaries. When she learns the journals might fall into the wrong hands and discredit her, she panics and rips out pages of entries that might destroy her hard-fought reputation. Relieved, she believes they are lost to history forever.

But are they? Travel with Elizabeth into American history and discover a young woman truly ahead of her time.

My Thoughts, Lost Diaries of Elizabeth Cady Stanton by Sarah Bates

Elizabeth Cady was not like other girls growing up in 19^th century Johnstown, New York. She hated working on her embroidery sample and didn’t understand why she couldn’t take part in more intellectual pursuits like talking about law with her father’s law students. Her father wished, often out loud, that she was a boy.

When it came time for her coming out, she wouldn’t do it. Sure, she liked boys but wanted one who would be more her intellectual equal and agree with her that women should have the same rights men had. She also believed that all slaves should be free with all the same rights and liberties as whites.

Though it was rare that a father would agree to further a daughter’s education, her father did so, reluctantly, at the urging of Elizabeth’s brother in-law. Elizabeth attended and graduated the Emma Willard’s Troy Female Seminary.

At age 25 she finally met the man she thought of as her equal, Henry Brewster Stanton.

The Lost Diaries of Elizabeth Cady Stanton covers Elizabeth’s childhood and young adulthood, before she becomes a suffragette. I would have liked the book to go on and cover her suffragette years or perhaps a sequel. However, as Sarah Bates, has pointed out, Elizabeth’s time as a suffragette is well documented. So, she chose to cover the earlier years.

I thought the book ended a bit abruptly but that is a small quibble. Sarah Bates painted a vivid portrait of Elizabeth Cady Stanton, with the stroke of her pen. I felt transported to the time and place and even became a close friend. The Lost Diaries of Elizabeth Cady Stanton is a must read for historical fiction readers. It has really made me hungry for more and Sarah Bates recommended two books that may just satisfy that need.

I received the ebook version for my honest review.

4.5/5

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About Sarah Bates

Sarah Bates worked as an advertising copywriter for ten years then as a freelance writer. Her clients included a book packager, the local chamber of commerce, a travel newsletter and a weekly newspaper where she covered business and schools.

Her short fiction has appeared in the Greenwich Village Literary Review, the San Diego North County Times (now the Union-Tribune) and the literary magazine Bravura. She is the author of Twenty-One Steps of Courage, an Army action novel published in 2012 and co-author of the 2005 short story collection, Out of Our Minds, Wild Stories by Wild Women.

She is the winner of Military Category, for Twenty-One Steps of Courage, Next Generation Indie Book Awards (2013) and 2nd Place Finalist, The Lost Diaries of Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Unpublished Novel- Category, San Diego Book Awards (2015)

Bates was an English Department writing tutor at Palomar College in California for ten years. She continues to privately tutor both academic and creative writing students and is writing a new novel. Sarah Bates lives in Fallbrook, California.

Website: http://www.sarahbatesauthor.com
Twitter: https://twitter.com/bateswriter
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/sarahbatesauthor/
Google+: https://plus.google.com/u/0/108133638718869926894/posts