It isn’t just about women in long skirts finally voting. The racists and the rich know that, and the politicians worry. Mercy Martin has an inside view as the battle for woman suffrage nears a climax, but she encounters many puzzles:

• So many women and Southern states oppose votes for women;
• So many people are afraid women voting would bring on free love, abandonment of family, or communism;
• So many racists are incredibly cruel to Blacks trying to vote.

From an innocent teen to a young adult, Mercy has a central role in the campaign. She advances from confinement in a suffragist jail cell to the national campaign for the suffrage amendment. She campaigns around Tennessee, ending at the capitol for the explosive end in that last state that might  ratify the amendment and grant the vote to women. This is a very personal view of a momentous event. Why should something so clearly right be so hard, and why were some bitter compromises made? Mercy is right in the middle, relied on by key players. Along the way, she acquires a husband, a baby, and  better parents than she was born with. ] This is an intimate view via alternative historical fiction, as accurate as it can be and as thoughtful and moving as it must be. In this first novella of a series, Mercy jumps into the campaign for woman suffrage and prepares for a vital role in the coming decades, when she continues on into the  wider civil rights struggle growing out of woman suffrage. By the author of Fly Twice Backward: Fresh Starts in Times of Troubles, a fascinating, funny, romantic alt-history science fiction epic of our times, globe-spanning and mind-bending, and glorious multimedia.