Outrageous: The Victoria Woodhull Saga, Volume One: Rise to Riches
by Neal Katz

Publication Date: October 1, 2015
Top Reads Publishing
Hardcover, Paperback, Ebook; 344 Pages

Series: The Victoria Woodhull Saga (Book 1)
Genre: Historical Fiction

Historical fictionalized account of Victoria Woodhull’s rise to presidential candidate and wealth, coming from poverty and abuse.

What compels a woman and her youngest sister to overcome abject poverty and violent abuse to grow up to defy convention and obliterate every barrier to become the first women to own and operate a Wall Street brokerage firm and publish their own newspaper?

How did Victoria Claflin Woodhull (1838 – 1927) become the first woman invited to speak to the United State Congress, and then the first female to run for president. What made Tennessee Celeste Claflin (1845 – 1923) so beguiling that the richest man in America, Cornelius Vanderbilt, fell completely in love with her?

What caused the sisters to live out their long lives as royalty and peerage in Europe. Victoria living as landed gentry outside of London, and Tennessee in a huge castle like a queen? Why aren’t these empowered and independent women iconic in our culture?

Volume One of The Victoria Woodhull Saga tells the poignant, lascivious, and compelling inside story of how the sisters worked closely with Cornelius Vanderbilt, who at age 74 fell in love with the beguiling 24-year old Tennessee. Victoria provided the titan of industry “Inside Her Information” gathered through the soiled sisterhood, the ladies of the evening working at the top seven brothels servicing the rich and famous of New York City.

This relationship resulted in the great lion of industry having his last public roar as together they manipulated the financial markets and created the impending collapse of the U.S. economy in the gold scandal of 1869. To avert the crash, President Ulysses S. Grant provides the richest man in America insider information on the gold market and telegrams Vanderbilt that his railroad company is “Too Big To Fail!” Vanderbilt was proclaimed “The Savior of the American Economy” for intervening in a crisis he helped create.

View Victorian America through the eyes and thoughts of one of its leading heroines., Victoria Woodhull. Watch as the infighting and elitism of the earliest suffrage women denigrating, castigating, and denouncing other passionate suffrage rights women delayed woman suffrage and equal legal standing for five decades. Learn wonderful anecdotes of the origins of products and phrases used today. Learn the story of Reverend Henry Ward Beecher, the most popular man in America, who transformed Christianity from his father’s “fire and brimstone” theology to one of a compassionate and loving Jesus, who will redeem all who turn to salvation with complete confession of their sins. The reverend’s personal life did not imitate his lofty and popular theology of his weekly sermons at Plymouth Church. He was a notorious womanizer, often bedding, and sometimes impregnating the wives, sisters, and daughters of his most ardent trackers and deacons of the church.

Written in the first person from Victoria’s viewpoint, Neal Katz weaves a compelling page-turning story that cleverly unfolds history while providing a wonderfully entertaining ride. Katz has pledged one half of book sale proceeds to charities dedicating to the empowerment and sustainable economic improvement of women, especially single mothers.

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Praise for Outrageous: Victoria Woodhull Saga by Neal Katz

“Victoria Woodhull is one of the most fascinating but forgotten characters in American history. She deserves to be better known by anyone who cares about gender equality and the ongoing fight to make America a more tolerant and just country–kudos to Neal Katz for bringing her story to life for a new generation of readers.” -Debby Applegate, Pulitzer Prize winning author of The Most Famous Man in America: The Biography of Henry Ward Beecher

“I can’t believe this is Neal’s first book. Incredibly well written, this is an important work. I see a National bestseller and a long running series.” -Victor Villasenor, National bestselling author of Rain of Gold,Three time Pulitzer Prize nominee, and author of Revenge of a Catholic Schoolboy

Guest Post by Neal Katz

Characters in Outrageous: The Victoria Woodhull Saga, Book One

Victoria (Claflin) Woodhull (Morton)
(1838–1927)
A Woman of Many Firsts

Overcoming poverty, sexual abuse, al third grade education, being sold into prostitution by her father, and growing up ‘dirt poor,’ Victoria Woodhull deserves to be an iconic symbol of female empowerment for women everywhere.

Victoria became the first woman to own and operate a wholly woman-owned securities brokerage on Wall Street, published the first wholly woman-owned regular newspaper, be invited and speak to the United States House of Representatives, and officially run for President of the United States (1872). 

Victoria acted as spokesperson for Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Susan B. Anthony for the National Woman Suffrage Association, President of the American Spiritualist Society for several terms, and a leading proponent of Free Love, which advocated not promiscuity, but equal legal rights for a woman and the abolishment of the enslavement of marriage.

Victoria foretold how the inability of women to set aside their differences and present exclusively male politicians a united front would delay American woman suffrage for over fifty years. 

Tennessee Celeste Claflin
(1845–1923)
Beguiling Youngest Sister and Partner

True clairvoyant and medium, keenly intelligent yet uneducated, the youngest sister of Victoria and constant business partner combined a unique sexual charisma with instinctual street smarts. It was said that she could stupefy any man simply by crossing his path.

At age twenty-four Tennie C. became the paramour of the Commodore Cornelius Vanderbilt, age seventy-four, the richest man in post-civil war America. Working together, Victoria, Tennie C., and the Agents of Vanderbilt promoted the Gold Scandal of 1869, which brought the United States economy and financial markets to the brink of total collapse.

Later in life, Tennessee married one of the wealthiest men in all of England, Francis Cook, Viscount of Montserrat, Portugal. Within months of their marriage, Queen Victoria created a Cook Baronetcy. As the wife of an English Baronet, Claflin would thereafter have been correctly styled “Lady Cook, Viscountess of Montserrat.” She lived out her days as a queen at her Moorish, arabesque style castle in Sintra, near Lisbon, Portugal, and at her several other homes throughout Europe.

During her long life, she confided to Victoria that only one man had captured her heart, the Commodore Cornelius Vanderbilt.

The Commodore Cornelius Vanderbilt
(1794–1877)
The Wealthiest Man in America

Born into a New Dutch dirt farming family on Staten Island, the young, ‘Cornele’ Vanderbilt grew up looking across the waters at Manhattan Island. At age eleven, having left school after the third grade, the young Vanderbilt who already mastered sailing his father’s flat hulled, single hemp sail, periauger, entered into an arrangement with his parents to buy the small craft and his freedom in lieu of being placed as an apprentice.

The youngest ‘Captain’ sailed vegetables to Manhattan Island and quickly learned to fill his boat with dry goods from the merchants to deliver to the Staten Islanders. Vanderbilt built the single craft business into a sailing ship empire. Vanderbilt seized an opportunity to learn steam propulsion and created a steamship empire. He often conquered competitors, forcing them to pay him a tribute not to compete with his ships on their routes.

Eventually Vanderbilt abandoned sailing ships, and proceeded to build the greatest railroad empire in America. Vanderbilt also conquered the most treacherous of all ventures, the stocks and bonds of Wall Street, and became the owner of the single largest company in America. Fiercely independent and driven, the Commodore competed with a ruthless patience. He always kept accounts to settle in the future if someone had got the better of him… for a while.

At age seventy-four, Vanderbilt met and fell completely and helplessly in love with Tennessee Celeste Claflin and her healing hands. She rejuvenated the elderly industrialist. He humored his paramour by agreeing to work with her sister, Victoria. Vanderbilt was shocked when Victoria could discover more information than his professional and often brutal agents. The Vanderbilt family was so alarmed with the romance between the Commodore and Tennessee that they arranged a marriage to a distant cousin and eventually removed Tennessee from the Commodore’s life.

Reverend Henry Ward Beecher
(1813–1887)
The Most Famous Man in America

The famous Reverend was a notorious womanizer, with a proclivity to bed and often impregnate the wives, daughters, and sisters of many of the deacons and powerful financial backers of his church. He led the change in Christianity from his father, Lyman Beecher’s fire and brimstone, hell and damnation to emphasize God’s love and redemption through confession of sins to Jesus Christ. The Reverend is best known today as the accused in the “Trial of the Century” in 1875 for adultery and alienation of affections of Libby Tilton, from the Reverend’s protégé, Theodore Tilton.

The pastor of the Plymouth Church in Brooklyn, New York for forty years, the Reverend’s Sunday Sermons were printed and syndicated throughout America and abroad. American Congregationalist clergyman, social reformer, and speaker, he was recognized for his support of the abolition of slavery, and his emphasis on God’s love.

Henry Ward Beecher was the eighth progeny of Lyman Beecher, a Calvinist minister who became one of the best-known evangelists of his age. Several of Henry’s brothers and sisters became well-known educators and activists, most notably Harriet Beecher Stowe, who achieved worldwide fame with her abolitionist novel Uncle Tom’s Cabin. His oldest sibling, Catherine Beecher, published A Treatise on Domestic Economy for the Use of Young Ladies at Home and at School in 1841, which became the woman’s bible of domestic conduct for the next 40 years.

Elizabeth Cady Stanton
(1815–1902
The Firebrand of the Woman Rights Movement

Early suffrage movement leader, Stanton co-authored the Declaration of Sentiments, claiming equal rights and legal standing for women, as presented at the Seneca Falls Convention held in 1848. Stanton is often credited with organizing the first women’s rights and women’s suffrage movement in the United States.

Daniel Cady, Stanton’s father, was a prominent attorney who served one term in the United States Congress (1814–1817) and later became both a circuit court judge and, in 1847, a New York Supreme Court justice. Young Elizabeth enjoyed perusing her father’s law library and debating legal issues with his law clerks. Stanton learned how disproportionately the law favored men over women, particularly over married women. She realized that married women had virtually no rights: property, income, employment, or even custody rights over their own children. When Elizabeth told her father that she wanted to become an attorney, he told her the fate of her birth, being born a woman, precluded it.

Stanton along with Susan B. Anthony, her friend, fellow advocate, and some say lover, declined to support passage of the Fourteenth and the Fifteenth Amendments to the United States Constitution. Thus, she opposed giving added legal protection and voting rights to African American men while women, black and white, were denied those same rights. This led to the formation of two separate women’s rights organizations. The schism delayed female suffrage for almost fifty years.

Stanton died in 1902 having authored both The Woman’s Bible (challenging the notion of female subservience in religious orthodoxy) and her autobiography Eighty Years and More, the definitive record of the early suffrage movement, along with many articles and pamphlets concerning female suffrage and women’s rights.

Frederic Douglass
(1818–1895)
Escaped Slave, Abolitionist Orator, and Statesman

“I would unite with anybody to do right and with nobody to do wrong.”  Frederick Douglass promoted equality for all people, black, white, woman, tribal American, or immigrant. 

Frederick Douglass knew about overcoming adversity, an escaped slave, he became the leading African American abolitionist, and statesman of his era. Douglass was an early and ardent proponent of woman rights, and was the only black to attend the Seneca Falls meeting in 1848. He was nominated for Vice President by the party that selected Victoria as its candidate for President.

Douglass was a compelling orator and trenchant antislavery writer. Once he began to speak, others had no choice but to sit back and listen. He stood as a living counter-example to slaveholders’ arguments that slaves lacked the intellectual capacity to function as independent American citizens. Even many Northerners at the time found it hard to believe that such a great orator had once been a slave.

John Pierpont (J. P.) Morgan
(1837–1913)
Powerful Financier and Insider

Private financial advisor to Victoria Woodhull and financier for The Commodore Cornelius Vanderbilt, Morgan provided part of the funding, along with Anthony Joseph Drexel (1826–1893) for the Gold Scandal of 1869. The scandal brought the U.S. economy to the brink of total failure with the simultaneous collapses of both the stock and gold markets. Everyone involved with Vanderbilt on the largest manipulation of the free markets in financial history made incredible sums of money. 

Young Morgan was the son of one of the most successful expatriated Americans, Junius Spencer Morgan, operating in London, England. Vanderbilt had conducted business with Julius for decades before calling the prodigal son, J.P. in to work with him. Vanderbilt endorsed Junius to secure and handle funding from the Bank of England for the Union forces during the Civil War. Similarly, Joseph Anthony Drexel was the son of another long-time financier associate for Vanderbilt, Francis Martin Drexel, who placed his boy at Drexel Burnham Lambert.

After successfully working for Vanderbilt in 1869, the two second-generation bankers formed Drexel, Morgan & Co. in 1871. That merchant bank became J.P. Morgan Bank & Co., financing the industrial revolution and providing emergency funding to the United States government on several occasions.

Susan Brownell Anthony
(1820–1906)
Powerful Financier and Insider

Lifelong friend, stalwart supporter, and rumored lover of Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Susan B. Anthony was one of the leading feminist advocates. In 1869 she co-founded the National Woman Suffrage Association with Stanton, which split the movement, ultimately delaying woman suffrage for decades. 

Always pushing the limits, Anthony was arrested in 1872 in her hometown of Rochester, New York for voting. She was convicted in a highly publicized trial, the United States v. Susan B. Anthony. Anthony refused to pay fines, accepting the consequence of imprisonment over compliance with the court order. Federal authorities, buckling to public outrage, decided against any further legal action.

Anthony was a tireless proponent for abolition, social reform, and women’s rights, traveling across the nation and delivering a hundred speeches a year. The austere and demanding woman had few intimate friends except for Stanton who she met in 1851, and Anthony always had a room in Elizabeth’s houses until her death in 1902.

About Neal Katz

Neal Katz is a semi-retired, serial entrepreneur, CEO with a passion for women rights. He lives a life based on self-awareness and Love. He practices Yoga, meditates daily, has taught A Course in Miracles, produced Oregon wines, enjoys being a gourmet chef, recites Vedic sutras, and writes his own inspirational poetry.

The saga of Victoria Woodhull appeales to Neal, as it serves three purposes. First, the story provokes public awareness of the historical and continuing denigration and subjugation of gender prejudice. Second, the tale exposes the historical basis for the manipulation of the free markets of stocks, bonds and commodities. Third, the story shows how existing financial and political power structures used prison and seizure of assets to prevent innovation and social change. Victoria Woodhull overcame all these obstacles in a remarkable life.

Neal chose to write in first person using Victoria s words, thoughts, and point of view to tell the tale, inviting the reader to see through her eyes. The style is magic realism along the lines of Allende, Marquez, and Kathleen McGowan (The Magdalene Trilogy). This is an expression of the HeForShe solidarity movement for gender equality championed by Emma Watson, and Neal proudly proclaims himself a male feminist!

Neal has pledged fifty percent (50%) of his author’s royalties from book sales and all ancillary revenues, including foreign print distribution and Hollywood rights to a foundation formed in tribute to Victoria Woodhull and her passion for woman rights. The foundation will promote and prove programs for the empowerment and sustainable economic improvement of women, especially single mothers.

For more information visit http://outrageousthebook.com/. You can also follow the author on Facebook, Twitter, and Goodreads.

Giveaway of Outrageous: Victoria Woodhull Saga by Neal Katz

This giveaway is for one signed paperback and is open to the U.S. only.  It ends on April 1, 2016 at 12 am pacific time.  Entries are accepted via Rafflecopter only.

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Tour Schedule for Outrageous: Victoria Woodhull Saga by Neal Katz

Monday, March 14
Guest Post & Giveaway at Teddy Rose Book Reviews
Spotlight at Passages to the Past

Tuesday, March 15
Interview at The Book Connection

Wednesday, March 16
Review & Giveaway at A Holland Reads

Thursday, March 17
Review at With Her Nose Stuck In A Book

Friday, March 18
Excerpt at I Heart Reading
Interview at Author Dianne Ascroft’s Blog

Monday, March 21
Character Interview at Boom Baby Reviews

Tuesday, March 22
Review at History From a Woman’s Perspective

Wednesday, March 23
Review at I’m Shelfish

Thursday, March 24
Excerpt at Historical Fiction Addicts

Monday, March 28
Review at Back Porchervations

Tuesday, March 29
Review at A Silver Twig

Friday, April 1
Review at Book Nerd