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Tuesday, April 5, 2016

Book Spotlight: Terrible Virtue by Ellen Feldman

Author: Ellen Feldman
Publisher: Harper
Date of publication: March 2016

In the spirit of The Paris Wife and Loving Frank, the provocative and compelling story of one of the most fascinating and influential figures of the twentieth century: Margaret Sanger, the founder of Planned Parenthood—an indomitable woman who, more than any other, and at great personal cost, shaped the sexual landscape we inhabit today.

The daughter of a hard-drinking, smooth-tongued free thinker and a mother worn down by thirteen children, Margaret Sanger vowed her life would be different. Trained as a nurse, she fought for social justice beside labor organizers, anarchists, socialists, and other progressives, eventually channeling her energy to one singular cause: legalizing contraception. It was a battle that would pit her against puritanical, patriarchal lawmakers, send her to prison again and again, force her to flee to England, and ultimately change the lives of women across the country and around the world.

This complex enigmatic revolutionary was at once vain and charismatic, generous and ruthless, sexually impulsive and coolly calculating—a competitive, self-centered woman who championed all women, a conflicted mother who suffered the worst tragedy a parent can experience. From opening the first illegal birth control clinic in America in 1916 through the founding of Planned Parenthood to the arrival of the Pill in the 1960s, Margaret Sanger sacrificed two husbands, three children, and scores of lovers in her fight for sexual equality and freedom.

With cameos by such legendary figures as Emma Goldman, John Reed, Big Bill Haywood, H. G. Wells, and the love of Margaret’s life, Havelock Ellis, this richly imagined portrait of a larger-than-life woman is at once sympathetic to her suffering and unsparing of her faults. Deeply insightful, Terrible Virtue is Margaret Sanger’s story as she herself might have told it.


About Ellen Feldman


Ellen Feldman, a 2009 Guggenheim Fellow, is the author of five previous novels, including Scottsboro, which was shortlisted for the Orange Prize for Fiction, andNext to Love. She lives in New York City.
For more information on Ellen and her work, please visit her website, www.ellenfeldman.com.

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Tour Stops
Tuesday, March 22nd: Sara’s Organized Chaos
Wednesday, March 23rd: Doing Dewey
Thursday, March 24th: Bibliotica
Friday, March 25th: Books on the Table
Monday, March 28th: A Literary Vacation
Tuesday, March 29th: Lesa’s Book Critiques
Wednesday, March 30th: bookchickdi
Thursday, March 31st: 5 Minutes For Books
Monday, April 4th: The Feminist Texican [Reads]
Tuesday, April 5th: From the TBR Pile
Wednesday, April 6th: Ms. Nose in a Book
Thursday, April 7th: Kritters Ramblings
Monday, April 11th: Puddletown Reviews
Tuesday, April 12th: Reading Reality
Wednesday, April 13th: Broken Teepee
Thursday, April 14th: Time 2 Read
Thursday, April 14th: Literary Feline

1 comment:

Heather J @ TLC Book Tours said...

Thanks for being a part of the tour.