Remember the Ladies, Gina Mulligan's debut novel, focuses on Amelia Cooke, a savvy lobbyist working for the National Women's Suffrage Association, starting in 1887, and takes its title from Abigail Adams's letter to her husband, John, as he was drafting the Declaration of Independence. But the accounts of backroom bargaining and legislators' vote swapping in Washington, D.C., remain topical in the 21st century.
After losing her parents at four, Amelia honed her survival skills in a Montana orphanage. Aged out at 18, she labored in an Arkansas cotton mill, where a brash speech for workers' rights earned her a dismissal and a path to Washington. She cajoled a prominent lobbyist into mentoring her and, after a decade, became a formidable political player. Not above using a strategically angled hat or a demure deference, lovely Amelia was well aware of the drawbacks and advantages of her gender.
As a neophyte, Amelia had a brief affair with a dashing young legislator; years later, when Amelia needed the now-powerful senator's vote, his pledge to keep women "in the bedroom and out of the voting room" hurt her cause and underscored her personal vulnerability. His anti-suffragist political finagling spelled defeat for the 19th Amendment, which didn't pass until 1920, long after Amelia left Washington.
By limiting her scope to the suffrage movement, Gina Mulligan strengthens her story; she mentions the recent Civil War, threats to develop Yellowstone commercially, the "greedy steel industry," styles and trends, but focuses on Amelia and her work for the vote. An entertaining character study of a strong woman, Remember the Ladies also reminds us to appreciate the right to vote. --Cheryl Krocker McKeon, manager, Book Passage, San Francisco