The remarkable story of one of the early women movement’s most effective leaders, a newspaper publisher who took the campaign for suffrage to Bleeding Kansas.

In the mid-1800s brave women began breaking the taboo of remaining silent at public gatherings. They began signing their names to petitions and flexing political muscle long before they had the vote. They wrote millions of words and published some of the most influential books and journals of their day. No one represented this early struggle — the small triumphs and discouraging setbacks — better than Clarina Howard Nichols (1810-1885), the subject of Diane Eickhoff’s engaging biography for YA readers and up.

Nichols was the victim of a failed marriage, a magnet to abused and mistreated women, and as a Vermont newspaper publisher, she had a strong voice at a time when women were just learning to speak up. When Nichols felt that progress wasn’t coming soon enough, she moved west, to Bleeding Kansas, where she would make history and show the world that feminism could thrive on the frontier.

Booklist declared, “The name Clarina Nichols deserves to be placed next to those of such luminaries as Susan B. Anthony and Elizabeth Cady Stanton,” and readers of this inspiring biography will see why.

A 2016 Kickstarter “Project We Love”