Allan Levi (Washington Post)
This past spring, word started to percolate in the publishing industry about “the white book” — a self-published novel with a stark, bright cover that was fast becoming one of the biggest sellers of the year. No one knew exactly how.
“Theo of Golden” had limited distribution, and virtually no publicity or marketing campaign. Its author, Allen Levi, lived alone on 1,600 acres of family land — mostly pine trees — in Georgia, where he kept honeybees and a blog, and posted homespun music videos. That was about the extent of his social media footprint.
“I’m writing a book, and it’s making me crazy,” Levi, 69, sang in one clip. “I’m writing a book, and I’m losing my mind.”
Allan Levi (Washington Post)
“I didn’t want someone to misinterpret the story as something that’s naive or purely sentimental,” Levi said, when we spoke over Zoom this month.
The author’s own path has taken a few twists. He practiced law in Columbus, Georgia, for 13 years, went abroad to the University of Edinburgh to study Scottish fiction and then became a full-time singer-songwriter, performing at corporate events and for Young Life, a Christian youth organization.
For a couple of decades, the Atlanta airport was functionally his second home. Around 2010, tiring of life on the road, he ramped down his tour schedule to spend more time with his sick brother and aging father, a forester. For a time, he even returned to the law, briefly serving as a probate judge in Harris County. But when his term ended, “I didn’t know what was next for me,” Levi said.
Then one morning, he was waiting in line at his usual cafe, taking in the portraits on display, and thought: Wouldn’t it be fun if someone bought all of them?
Allan Levi (Washington Post)
He purchased a handful, and “over the course of the next few days and weeks, I would look at them and imagine what stories they might be trying to tell me,” Levi said.
These eventually inspired the characters of Kendrick, a custodian at the nearby university; Simone, a cello student; and Ellen, an unhoused woman who often bicycles around the public square. Gradually, Theo’s encounters spark deep friendships and shed light on his tragic past — including his reasons for coming to Golden.
With songwriting, words had been easier to wrestle to the mat, covering up any imperfections with music. Levi had no plan to publish the manuscript; finishing it felt like accomplishment enough. Then his college buddies, a tight-knit group of six who reunited annually to reminisce, talked him into sharing the draft. (Working title: “There Was an Old Man.”)
“We said, ‘You’ve got to do something with this,’” said one of them, Ben May. “‘Don’t put it back in the drawer, and don’t just pat yourself on the back.’
Allan Levi (Washington Post)
Levi enlisted the help of his niece Aron Ritchie, then working as a project manager in Alabama, to shepherd “Theo” to publication in October 2023. Though she had thrown herself into researching the ins and outs of independent publishing, she took a low-fi approach to publicity.
She compiled a spreadsheet of Levi’s sprawling network from the various chapters of his life — childhood, college, music, his volunteer work reading to elementary-schoolers and working at a foster home — asking contacts to spread the word. At night, after putting her kids to bed, she posted to Facebook groups from her phone, trying to reach book clubs across the country. (“Facebook is not dead,” Ritchie said.)
If they were within driving distance, Levi drove to visit in person, meeting with 10 or 20 people at a time. Every few weeks, she prepped him a call sheet titled “Good souls to connect with”: readers who had emailed Levi touching thank-you notes, or who wanted to teach the book in a course, or who shared it with their cancer support group.
Allan Levi (Washington Post)
“Theo of Golden” sold a respectable 3,000 copies by the end of 2023.
In 2024: 25,000. Ritchie predicted that sales would drop in early 2025 — “October, November, December: Those are your biggest months” — but instead, they remained steady.
The spring brought a surge whose cause she still can’t pinpoint, and suddenly they were selling a thousand copies a day. “We’ll never know, this side of heaven, how all this connected,” she said. Maybe it was a longtime friend of Levi’s who worked in athletics at the University of Alabama: “There are a lot of crazy Alabama football fans,” May suggested.
Maybe it was an enthusiast turned pal in Macon, Georgia, who bought so many books, practically by the boxful, that Levi joked he must be flinging them out his car window.
The book’s initial readership has been concentrated in the South and largely came from Facebook, “which is an older demographic,” noted Kate Nintzel, editorial director at Atria Books, the Simon & Schuster imprint that acquired “Theo” in October. “And I think that was important to the discovery and to the way the book reads and the way it connects.”
Allan Levi (Washington Post)
Levi’s journey to publication “has a purity to it,” said Atria Books editor Sean deLone, who described the pitching process for “Theo” as highly competitive: “Everyone around the business knew it was special.”
Dovetailing with its author’s persona, the book’s message — of outreach to strangers, of small acts of generosity, of chance encounters unaided (and unhindered) by technology — turned audiences into evangelists.
As publishers began making offers, Ritchie ran the numbers and told her uncle that he stood to make more money if he stayed independent: “But what he was willing to sacrifice for was the distribution.”
Levi had a sense of mission, she said: “If someone reads something that he writes, and it has an impact on them . . . then to him that’s the win.”
Title: "How a nearly 70-year-old debut novelist published 2025’s breakout hit"
Subtitle: With virtually no marketing or social media presence, “Theo of Golden” became a blockbuster.
December 24, 2025, By Sophia Nguyen
#1 New York Times bestseller, Amazon: #1 this week, 4.7* with @50K ratings
Biography Allan Levi
Allen grew up in Columbus, Georgia, attended University of Georgia for degrees in English and Law, and worked as an attorney from 1980 to 1990. He left law practice for two years in 1990, moved to Scotland, and, while there, received a degree in Scottish fiction from the University of Edinburgh. He returned home, resumed law practice for three years, and finally ventured into vocational music in 1996.
Since then, he has worked as a traveling musician, sharing his whimsical, thought-provoking brand of songwriting and storytelling to audiences across the U.S. He has over twenty albums to his credit, as well as hundreds of other unpublished songs.
In 2014, he published The Last Sweet Mile, a memoir of the close friendship he shared with his brother, Gary, who died in 2012. He also wrote and published a children’s book, Oliviatown, adapted from a song of the same title. Allen published his first novel, Theo of Golden, in 2023.
When not reading or writing Allen cares for family acreage where he lives with his father, tries to spend time with family nearby, keeps a full schedule of involvement in the small community around him, and dreams of being an artist someday.
Interviews
Interview with Allen Levi
An Evening with Allen Levi
With Katie Couric
Franklin Theater
Genre: Literary novel
As genre, this book is defined only as a "literary novel," a term that covers a wide range of fiction. And Allen Levi is considered a "Southern" writer, and a Christian one, although he declined that label.
"Literary" is a broad genre term. Can it be better defined? And he is definitely "Southern." So what does that mean?
Structurally, I see this novel as a compilation of stories, within a framework, related to the short story tradition, particularly the Southern short story tradition. Let me explain.
Genre: Literary novel
Geoffrey Chaucer's The Canterbury Tales is a collection of 24 stories written in Middle English between 1387 and 1400, considered a masterpiece of English literature.
The tales are framed as a storytelling contest by a group of pilgrims traveling from London to Canterbury Cathedral, offering a diverse and critical look at medieval English society, from the pious to the profane, through characters like the Knight, the Wife of Bath, and the Miller.
The work is famous for its range of genres, from romance to farce, and its significant role in establishing English as a literary language.
Genre: Literary novel
Even earlier, 14th-century Italian author Giovanni Boccaccio (1313–1375) wrote The Decameron, a collection of short stories.
The book is structured as a frame story containing 100 tales told by a group of seven young women and three young men as they shelter in a secluded villa just outside Florence to escape the Black Death, which was afflicting the city.
The epidemic is likely what Boccaccio used for the basis of the book which was thought to be written between 1348 and 1353. The various tales of love in The Decameron range from the erotic to the tragic. Tales of wit, practical jokes, and life lessons also contribute to the mosaic.
In addition to its literary value and widespread influence (for example on Chaucer's The Canterbury Tales), it provides a document of life at the time. Written in the vernacular of the Florentine language, it is considered a masterpiece of early Italian prose.
Genre: Literary novel
Is Theo of Golden similar--a sequence of stories about the recipients of the portraits, with Theo's gift of them as the frame story?
If so, was the Southern short story an influence? Was the Bible?
Note: Elizabeth Strout does something similar with Olive Kitteridge, her Pulitzer Prize-winning collection of 13 interconnected short stories centered on the complex, often prickly, retired schoolteacher Olive in the fictional town of Crosby, Maine.
Short Story (Britannica)
The short story is a brief fictional prose narrative, shorter than a novel, that usually deals with only a few characters.
The short story is usually concerned with a single effect conveyed in only one or a few significant episodes or scenes. The form encourages economy of setting, concise narrative, and the omission of a complex plot; character is disclosed in action and dramatic encounter but is seldom fully developed. Despite its relatively limited scope, though, a short story is often judged by its ability to provide a “complete” or satisfying treatment of its characters and subject.
Before the 19th century the short story was not generally regarded as a distinct literary form. But although it may seem a uniquely modern genre, the fact is that short prose fiction is nearly as old as language itself. Throughout history humankind has enjoyed various types of brief narratives: jests, anecdotes, studied digressions, short allegorical romances, moralizing fairy tales, short myths, and abbreviated historical legends. None of these constitutes a short story as it has been defined since the 19th century, but they do make up a large part of the milieu from which the modern short story emerged.
Short Story (AI Summary)
The primary purpose of a short story is to evoke a single, focused effect, mood, or emotional response in the reader, often exploring a specific theme or character moment in a concise, self-contained narrative. Unlike novels, they are designed to be read in one sitting, providing a "snapshot" of life that offers insight, revelation, or entertainment.
Key purposes and functions include:
Emotional and Intellectual Impact: Short stories aim to provoke, move, or enlighten the reader, offering a concentrated experience that often leads to a new understanding of a human condition.
Narrative Focus: By limiting scope to one, or a few, key scenes or characters, they eliminate unnecessary detail to achieve maximum impact.
Artistic Exploration: Writers use short stories as a "sandbox" to experiment with new styles, genres, or perspectives without the immense time commitment of a novel.
Psychological Insight: They help readers make sense of events and can offer sharper social or psychological perspectives.
Artistic Economy: They represent the "art of the turn," focusing on making every word count to create a finished product that is quickly consumable.
Southern Writers
In its simplest form, Southern literature consists of writing about the American South. Often, "the South" is defined, for historical as well as geographical reasons, as the states of South Carolina, Georgia, Florida, Alabama, North Carolina, Virginia, Tennessee, Mississippi, Louisiana, Texas, Oklahoma, Kentucky, West Virginia and Arkansas. Pre-Civil War definitions of the South often included Missouri, Maryland, and Delaware as well.
However, "the South" is also a social, political, economic, and cultural construct that transcends these geographical boundaries.
Southern Writers
In addition to the geographical component of Southern literature, certain themes have appeared because of the similar histories of the Southern states in regard to American slavery, the Civil War, and the reconstruction era.
The conservative culture of the American South has also produced a strong focus on family, religion, and community in one's personal and social life, the use of Southern dialects, and a strong sense of "place."
The South's troubled history with racial issues also continually appears in its literature.
Southern Short Story Writers (AI)
Southern writing is characterized by a deep, almost obsessive engagement with the region's complex history, the burden of the past, a strong sense of place, and the intricate, often oppressive, social structures of family, race, and religion. It is frequently marked by a distinctive style that includes the Southern Gothic, regional vernacular, and a "backward glance" at a lost, agrarian, or mythologized society.
Key unique characteristics of Southern writing include:
An Unavoidable Past and History: Southern literature is deeply rooted in the history of the region—specifically the Civil War, slavery, and Reconstruction. The past is never dead; it is a living force that shapes the actions, guilt, and memories of characters in the present.
A "Sense of Place" and Landscape: The physical landscape—the heat, swamps, red clay, and dense forests—acts as a character itself, influencing the psyche and fate of the inhabitants. The setting is often a specific, detailed Southern locale that is crucial to the story's authenticity.
The Southern Gothic and Grotesque: This style blends the macabre with the mundane, using eccentric, "grotesque" characters, decayed settings, and themes of violence or insanity to expose the deeper, often hidden truths of Southern society.
Southern Short Story Writers (AI)
Key unique characteristics of Southern writing include:
Family, Tradition, and Community: Family lineage, honor, and reputation are paramount, often acting as a burden or a rigid structure. There is a strong, sometimes suffocating, emphasis on community, social hierarchies, and the preservation of tradition.
Religion and "Christ-Haunted" Themes: Southern literature frequently features a backdrop of intense Christianity, exploring the tension between moral behavior, religious hypocrisy, and the search for redemption.
Distinctive Language and Voice: The use of colloquialisms, regional dialects, and specific, slow-paced cadences makes the voice of Southern writing instantly recognizable.
Race and Social Conflict: The enduring, often violent, legacy of racial inequality, segregation, and the caste system is a central, unavoidable theme that defines the moral landscape of the region.
Agrarianism vs. Industrialization: Much of the literature explores the conflict between a traditional, agrarian way of life and the encroaching forces of industrialization, urban growth, and modernity.
Southern Writers Caché
In 1884, Mark Twain published what is arguably the most influential Southern novel of the 19th century, Adventures of Huckleberry Finn. Ernest Hemingway said of the novel, "All modern American literature comes from one book by Mark Twain called Huckleberry Finn." This statement applies even more to Southern literature because of the novel's frank dealings with issues such as race and violence.
Kate Chopin was another central figure in post-Civil War Southern literature. Focusing her writing largely on the French Creole communities of Louisiana, Chopin established her literary reputation with the short story collections Bayou Folk (1894) and A Night in Acadie (1897). These stories offered not only a sociological portrait of a specific Southern culture but also furthered the legacy of the American short story as a uniquely vital and complex narrative genre.
NOTE: she also made use of the burgeoning magazine trend, which allowed women like her the luxury of writing from home, and getting paid for it.
Southern Writers Caché
But it was with the publication of her second and final novel The Awakening (1899) that she gained notoriety of a different sort. The novel shocked audiences with its frank and unsentimental portrayal of female sexuality and psychology. It paved the way for the Southern novel as both a serious genre and one that tackled the complex and untidy emotional lives of its characters.
Today she is widely regarded as not only one of the most important female writers in American literature, but one of the most important chroniclers of the post-Civil War South and one of the first writers to treat the female experience with complexity and without condescension.
In the 1920s and 1930s, a renaissance in Southern literature began with the appearance of writers such as William Faulkner, Katherine Anne Porter, Thomas Wolfe, Robert Penn Warren, and Tennessee Williams, among others. Because of the distance the Southern Renaissance authors had from the American Civil War and slavery, they were more objective in their writings about the South.
Southern Writers Caché
During the 1920s, Southern poetry called for a return to the South's agrarian past and bemoaned the rise of Southern industrialism and urbanization. They noted that creativity and industrialism were not compatible and desired the return to a lifestyle that would afford the Southerner leisure (a quality the Agrarians most felt conducive to creativity).
NOTE: among mystery writers, Margaret Maron is notable for focusing her novels on specifically North Carolina and the problems involved with its transition from agriculture to hi-tech.
Writers like Faulkner, who won the Nobel Prize in Literature for 1949, also brought new techniques such as stream of consciousness and complex narrative techniques to their writings. For instance, his novel As I Lay Dying, is told by changing narrators ranging from the deceased Addie to her young son.
Southern Writers Caché
The late 1930s also saw the publication of one of the best-known Southern novels, Gone with the Wind by Margaret Mitchell. The novel, published in 1936, quickly became a bestseller. It won the 1937 Pulitzer Prize, and in 1939 an equally famous movie of the novel premiered.
In the eyes of some modern scholars, Mitchell's novel consolidated white supremacist Lost Cause ideologies to construct a bucolic plantation South in which slavery was a benign, or even benevolent, institution. Under this view, she presents white southerners as victims of a rapacious Northern industrial capitalism and depicts black southerners as either lazy, stupid, and over sexualized, or as docile, childlike, and resolutely loyal to their white masters.
Southern literature has always drawn audiences outside the South and outside the United States, and Gone with the Wind has continued to popularize harmful stereotypes of southern history and culture for audiences around the world. Despite this criticism, Gone with the Wind has enjoyed an enduring legacy as the most popular American novel ever written, an incredible achievement for a female writer.
Southern Writers Caché
Southern literature following the Second World War grew thematically as it embraced the social and cultural changes in the South resulting from the Civil Rights Movement. In addition, more non-Christian, homosexual, female and African-American writers began to be accepted as part of Southern literature, including African Americans such as Zora Neale Hurston and Sterling Allen Brown, along with women such as Eudora Welty, Flannery O'Connor, Ellen Glasgow, Carson McCullers, Katherine Anne Porter, and Shirley Ann Grau, among many others.
Other well-known Southern writers of this period include Reynolds Price, James Dickey, William Price Fox, Davis Grubb, Walker Percy, and William Styron. One of the most highly praised Southern novels of the 20th century, To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee, won the Pulitzer Prize when it was published in 1960. New Orleans native and Harper Lee's friend, Truman Capote also found great success in the middle 20th century with Breakfast at Tiffany's and later In Cold Blood.
Another famous novel of the 1960s is A Confederacy of Dunces, written by New Orleans native John Kennedy Toole in the 1960s but not published until 1980. It won the Pulitzer Prize in 1981 and has since become a cult classic.
Great Southern Writers
William Faulkner: "A Rose for Emily," The Sound and the Fury
Pulitzer for The Reivers, 1962
1949 Nobel Prize in Literature
Tennessee Williams: his work described as "emotionally raw," "painful,"
Streetcar Named Desire, Cat on a Hot Tin Roof (both won Pulitzers) The Glass Menagerie,
Eudora Welty: The Optimist's Daughter won the Pulitzer Prize in 1973.
the book is "a miracle of compression, the kind of book, small in scope but profound in its implications, that rewards a lifetime of work". The plot focuses on family struggles when the daughter and the second wife of a judge confront each other in the limited confines of a hospital room while the judge undergoes eye surgery.
Great Southern Writers
Flannery O'Connor: known for "her emphasis of the grotesque, O'Connor said: "[A]nything that comes out of the South is going to be called grotesque by the northern reader, unless it is grotesque, in which case, it is going to be called realistic."
Her fiction features morally flawed protagonists who frequently interact with characters with disabilities or are disabled themselves. The issue of race often appears. Most of her works feature disturbing elements, although she did not like to be characterized as cynical. "I am mighty tired of reading reviews that call A Good Man brutal and sarcastic," . . . "The stories are hard, but they are hard, because there is nothing harder or less sentimental than Christian realism. When I see these stories described as horror stories, I am always amused, because the reviewer always has hold of the wrong horror."
Great Southern Writers
Ralph Ellison
Alice Walker
Zora Neale Hurston
Richard Wright
https://www.gutenberg.org/
Character-driven writing (BBC Maestro)
Character-driven writing focuses on the central character and their inner transformation from the beginning to the end of the story. It deals with their thoughts, feelings, struggles and relationships with others, and the story arc tends to be one of internal conflict and resolution.
In character-driven writing, it’s not so much what the character has to deal with, but how they deal with the things that happen to them. The character must make decisions and will actively change in the face of events.
It’s important to remember that character-driven stories still contain elements of plot, but in character-driven writing, the plot exists to develop the character.
The beauty of character-driven writing is the intimate connection readers feel to the protagonist. It’s almost as if they inhabit the mind of the central character for the duration of the tale.
Since readers will spend so much time with one character in this style of writing, a dynamic and compelling main character is essential for keeping your readers engaged.
Character-driven writing (BBC Maestro)
Make sure your character has:
A backstory: write a character bio. Where have they come from? Where are they trying to go? Both literally and figuratively. Think about what makes your character behave the way they do. What’s driving them?
A unique voice: both in terms of how they talk but also their perspectives on the world. Again, link this back to your character bio – what shaped their beliefs? What do they believe in?
Internal conflict – what aspect of themselves are they struggling with? All stories need conflict to be interesting, but internal conflict can be the most fascinating to explore. Perhaps they want something they shouldn’t? Perhaps they did something they regret?
Momentum – your character should make active choices in the story rather than simply having events happen to them. How they choose to respond to situations can reveal a lot about a character.
Character-driven writing (AI generated)
Key Characteristics of These Stories
Internal Conflicts: Characters grapple with insecurity, trauma, or identity
Slow-Paced Plot: The focus is on character relationships over high-stakes action
Unreliable Narrators: Stories often use first-person perspectives to show how a character's flawed perception shapes their reality.
Character-driven writing (AI generated)
Key aspects of character-driven narratives include:
Focus on Transformation: The narrative arc centers on how the character changes internally.
Internal Conflicts: The tension stems from a character's internal struggles, relationships, or, moral dilemmas.
Decisions Drive Action: Plot events are consequences of the characters' personalities and choices, not random occurrences.
Genre Tendencies: Frequently found in literary fiction, drama, memoirs, and character studies (e.g., To Kill a Mockingbird, Little Women).
Depth Over Pace: While not lacking a plot, these stories are often slower-paced, focusing on the "how" and "why" of behavior rather than just the "what."
Character-driven writing (AI generated)
Examples of character-driven novels:
To Kill A Mockingbird by Harper Lee
Where The Crawdads Sing by Delia Owens
The Book Thief by Markus Zusakry
Tana French novels
Jane Eyre by Charlotte Brontë
Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen
The Brothers Karamazov by Fyodor Dostoyevsky
Great Expectations by Charles Dickens
The Picture of Dorian Gray by Oscar Wilde
Crime and Punishment by Fyodor Dostoyevsky
Wuthering Heights by Emily Brontë
Little Women by Louisa May Alcott
The Catcher in the Rye by J.D. Salinger
The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald
Storytelling (National Geographic)
Stories are hardwired into our very biology. Our brains arrive filled with all the cognitive machinery needed to comprehend stories and share them with others. We are storytelling organisms that use narrative structures to organize our thoughts; because we use stories to recall facts, our knowledge is based on stories themselves. Little wonder, then, that our knowledge of early man shows evidence of storytelling—it was there from the start.
People remember how stories make them feel, and are more inspired to take action than if they just heard facts and figures.
Since the origin of humankind, we have used stories as a way to entertain, inform, inspire, and provide cultural continuity. Storytelling emerged long before the written word, which on its arrival helped stories to grow and spread even further.
Storytelling (NPR)
When you listen to a story, whatever your age, you're transported mentally to another time and place — and who couldn't use that right now?
"We all know this delicious feeling of being swept into a story world," says Liz Neeley, who directs The Story Collider, a nonprofit production company that, in nonpandemic times, stages live events filled with personal stories about science. "You forget about your surroundings," she says, "and you're entirely immersed."
Depending on the story you're reading, watching or listening to, your palms may start to sweat, scientists find. You'll blink faster, and your heart might flutter or skip. Your facial expressions shift, and the muscles above your eyebrows will react to the words — another sign that you're engaged.
Storytelling (NPR)
A growing body of brain science offers even more insight into what's behind these experiences.
On functional MRI scans, many different areas of the brain light up when someone is listening to a narrative, Neeley says — not only the networks involved in language processing, but other neural circuits, too. One study of listeners found that the brain networks that process emotions arising from sounds — along with areas involved in movement — were activated, especially during the emotional parts of the story.
As you hear a story unfold, your brain waves actually start to synchronize with those of the storyteller, says Uri Hasson, professor of psychology and neuroscience at Princeton University. When he and his research team recorded the brain activity in two people as one person told a story and the other listened, they found that the greater the listener's comprehension, the more closely the brain wave patterns mirrored those of the storyteller.
Storytelling (NPR)
Brain regions that do complex information processing seem to be engaged, Hasson explains: It's as though, "I'm trying to make your brain similar to mine in areas that really capture the meaning, the situation, the schema — the context of the world."
Other scientists turned up interesting activity in the parts of the brain engaged in making predictions. When we read, brain networks involved in deciphering — or imagining — another person's motives, and the areas involved in guessing what will happen next are activated, Neeley says. Imagining what drives other people — which feeds into our predictions — helps us see a situation from different perspectives. It can even shift our core beliefs, Neeley says, when we "come back out of the story world into regular life."
Storytelling (NPR)
Stories can alter broader attitudes as well, Green says — like our views on relationships, politics or the environment. Messages that feel like commands — even good advice coming from a friend — aren't always received well. If you feel like you're being pushed into a corner, you're more likely to push back. But if someone tells you a story about the time they, too, had to end a painful relationship, for example, the information will likely come across less like a lecture and more like a personal truth.
Neeley has been taking advantage of these effects to shift perceptions about science and scientists in her work with Story Collider. "We try and take everybody — all different people and perspectives — put them onstage, and hear what a life in science is really like," she says.
Solid information in any form is good, Green says. "But that's not necessarily enough." A vivid, emotional story "can give that extra push to make it feel more real or more important." If you look at the times somebody's beliefs have been changed, she says, it's often because of a story that "hits them in the heart."
Storytelling
Jennifer Aaker—YouTube
Next Week
Discussion of Theo of Golden
Nora O'Donnell, We the Women
We the Women: The Hidden Heroes Who Shaped America by Norah O'Donnell (Author), Kate Andersen Brower (Author)
#1 Best Seller in Women in History
A vivid portrait of the unsung American women from 1776 to today who changed the course of history in their fight for freedom and helped shape a more perfect union.
“This terrific book reveals the central, though often hidden role that women have played at every stage of our country’s history.”—Doris Kearns Goodwin
We the Women presents a fresh look at American history through the eyes of women, introducing us to inspiring patriots who demanded that the country live up to the promises made 250 years ago in the Declaration of Independence: “that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.” Since the signing of that document, the pressing question from women has been: Why don’t those unalienable rights apply to us?
Through extensive research and interviews, as well as historical documents and old photos, O’Donnell curates a compelling portrait of these fierce fighters for freedom. From Mary Katherine Goddard, who printed the first signed Declaration of Independence, to the Forten family women, who were active in the abolition and suffrage movements and were considered the “Black Founders” of Philadelphia, to the first women who served in the armed forces even before they had the right to vote, O’Donnell brings these extraordinary women together for the first time, and in doing so writes the American story anew.