Victoria Woodhull Summary

Please describe The Renegade Queen to readers who haven 't heard about it yet

The Renegade Queen follows the extraordinary life of Victoria Woodhull from her childhood in the 1840s to when she was forced to live abroad in the late 1870s. Although she grew up in a poor and dysfunctional household and was even sold into marriage, she managed to influence the course of social and political events. She was the first female stockbroker, the first woman to testify in front of Congress, one of the first women to run a newspaper, and the first woman to run for President. She ran for President in 1872, approximately fifty years before women could even vote. Victoria had powerful friends and enemies. For example, her “frenemy” was Susan B. Anthony and they were close before they had a powerful rivalry. She was friends with robber baron Commodore Vanderbilt and U.S.

I decided to write fiction instead of non-fiction for three reasons. The first reason is that I wanted the characters to have conversations, and it is difficult, if not impossible, to know exactly what the characters said to each other. Even reviewing primary sources such as letters, and essays by the characters, they will have contradictory versions of events. So I did not want to open myself up to criticism for not being accurate.

The second reason is what I just touched on, many of the events in Victoria’s life are recorded by different sources and these sources contradict each other. Some of the anti-Victoria interpretations can be chalked up to the sexism at the time and the constant tension between Victoria and Susan B. Anthony. However, interviews with Victoria during her later life conflict with interviews from her earlier life, so it’s difficult to determine what is and is not accurate and I did not want to choose a version for every event and leave that open for question in terms of