Review: The Golden Lane: How Missouri Women Gained the Vote and Changed History

The Golden Lane: How Missouri Women Gained the Vote and Changed History by Margot Ford McMillen
My rating: 2 of 5 stars

The Golden Lane is a short overview of the fight of Missouri suffragists to gain the right to vote. The book leans heavily on St. Louis, the site of the "Golden Lane." The Golden Lane was a protest by suffragists in St. Louis during the 1916 Democratic National Convention, the brainchild of Emily Newell Blair of Carthage, Missouri. A swarm of women dressed in suffragist white accented in yellow holding yellow parasols lined the street outside the convention to gain the attention of lawmakers for women's right to vote.

Whereas the book is a good overview of key people and events, it does tend to drift off into topics that have no bearing on the titled subject. A discourse on St. Louis and the Busch family/beer company is more detailed than some topics that I would expect to read about. A couple of the important suffragists like Victoria Minor and Emily Newell Blair have chapters dedicated to them but they garner a few paragraphs instead of the whole chapter and discussion about their dress and demeanor in pictures tends to be more detailed than their suffrage work. The cathartic moment of the Golden Lane seemed to be little more than a passing few comments than the building up of the moment.

What you do get is more of an overview of the suffrage movement in St. Louis, not of the whole state, and of a timeline of the city from the civil war through the ratification of the suffrage amendment. For those studying the movement, this book provides a jumping-off spot to begin research.

View all my reviews

Review: Wicked Harvest

Wicked Harvest by Karen MacInerney
My rating: 0 of 5 stars

Autumn has arrived in the little town of Buttercup, Texas and once again a killer is loose. Buttercup is the home of novice farm girl Lucy Resnick who is struggling to maintain her grandmother's farm. The town is in the throes of Oktoberfest and a new brewery is opening up with a long family history to the area. During the grand reveal of a new beer from an old family recipe, one of the proprietors turns up dead.

Lucy, who is a former investigative reporter, goes in search of the killer and motive behind the murder while also handling her own mystery back on her farm. Can Lucy put the pieces of the puzzle together before another Buttercupian meets their demise?

I thoroughly enjoy all of Karen MacInerney's cozy mystery series. I especially enjoy her Dewberry Farm Mysteries for the Texas references and setting. I am looking forward to the further adventures of Lucy in Buttercup, Texas.

View all my reviews

Review: Boots of Leather, Slippers of Gold: The History of a Lesbian Community

Boots of Leather, Slippers of Gold: The History of a Lesbian Community by Elizabeth Lapovsky Kennedy
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Boots of Leather, Slippers of Gold is specifically about the history of the Lesbian community of Buffalo, NY from the 1940s-1960s. The authors interviewed a range of women identifying as both butch and femme, as well as those that just simply identify as lesbian. These women were often closeted but sometimes weren't. They spent a lot of time in bars and at house parties. Some were young and naive to the community others were older and acted as mentors to the newcomers of the community. They lived in a society that told them they had to be dainty and subservient to men and husbands. Some were women whose husbands were gay, so each went on with their secret lives, living as the "normal" couple in the mainstream public. For the women who identified as butch, they were able to eventually feel like they could dress the part in the 1940s as women began to dress in slacks and blouses while filling in jobs that men left behind to go to war. They felt more accepted and felt like they could be themselves.

Their lives were also often thrown into turmoil as friends and lovers came and went. They kept their true identities hidden from family and at times, the law. Some built lasting relationships that are still going strong today.

This book is narrowly focused on one small community which may or may not have had a similar experience to other small communities across the country. The stories are very interesting and at times shocking. Many suffered double oppression of patrimony, relegated to be subservient as women and also second fiddle to the male gay community. These women had to carve out their own niche to find places where they could be out in public and be comfortable with who they were in a society that did not accept them.

View all my reviews