Along with her loose and scandalous sister, Tennessee, Victoria manipulates Vanderbilt and together they conspire to crash the stock market”'and profit from it. James introduces Victoria to one of the wealthiest men in America-Commodore Vanderbilt. Victoria chooses revolution.īut revolutions are expensive, and Victoria needs money. She can stay in an abusive marriage and continue to work as a psychic, or she can take the offer of support from handsome Civil War general James Blood and set about to turn society upside down. It’s 1869 and Victoria has a choice to make. This is the true story of Victoria Woodhull and the love of her life, James Blood.Īdored by the poor, hated by the powerful, forced into hiding during their lifetimes and erased from history after death, the legend of their love lives on. Their social revolution attracted the unwanted who were left out of the new wealth: the freed slaves, the new immigrants, and women. He was the Hero of Vicksburg, disillusioned with the government after witnessing the devastating carnage of the Civil War. She was the first woman to run for President, campaigning before women could vote. Victoria is not your conventional heroine, but in this time of the United States, conventions mattered little.Two Renegades So Controversial They Were Erased From Historyĭiscarded by society, she led a social revolution. Victoria Woodhull is a multifaceted character who evokes empathy, the occasional laugh, and ultimately sympathy for the plight of the hardworking woman. That is what ultimately sets them apart from those in the history books.Įva Flynn’s work is powerful in its portrayal of a renegade suffragette. They are iconoclasts who are not willing to tread lightly in their path towards the vote, but will burn every bridge if necessary. Victoria throws herself fully into the woman’s equality movement along with her sister Tennessee. She also equates the handicap of her son with her husband’s lust for drink. She sees parallels between the move for freedom of African Americans and women in the United States.

Victoria marries the dashing Canning and immerses herself in the anti-slavery movement, but is subject to the drudgery of her new husband’s drinking and womanizing. Her wretched future is derailed by the seeming good nature of Canning Woodhull, who frees her from the captivity of her abusive father. She is given the gift of clairvoyance, yet exploited and abused by her huckster pimp father. Our protagonist is the sixth of ten children, conceived in a tent during a revival. But this is getting ahead of the book at hand, The Renegade Queen.

She is at the forefront of the women’s suffrage movement along with the likes of Susan B. Victoria Claflin is a woman for the ages: this would be true except for the fact that her role in history, if not women’s history, hadn’t been sanitized, or even scrubbed out.

The Renegade Queen by Eva Flynn