Cindy Peyser Safronoff first learned how to analyze historical writings and independently research topics in-depth in her high school US history class at The Bush School in Seattle. She went on to study liberal arts and sciences at The Evergreen State College, which is known for its interdisciplinary approach to education. After graduation, Cindy Peyser Safronoff honed her writing skills professionally through business correspondence, marketing copy, and technical user manuals while running a small software company.
Following a personal desire to connect with her ancestral roots, Cindy learned advanced library research and how to set individual lives into historic context during a year-long Genealogy and Family History certificate program through the University of Washington extension. As part of the coursework, she began exploring nineteenth-century topics of marriage, divorce, and working women as it related to the early life of her paternal grandfather. He was raised near “Skid Row” in Seattle during the Klondike gold rush era by his divorced mother who just a few years earlier had given up a career as a Broadway actress to get married and move west.
Over several years, Cindy applied her historical research skills towards discovering how Mary Baker Eddy “crossed swords with free-love” in “about the year 1875.” Like a detective trying to solve a mystery, she pieced together facts and quotes from a variety of sources and connected the dots to tell a fascinating story which had been lost to American history. The result is Crossing Swords: Mary Baker Eddy vs. Victoria Claflin Woodhull and the Battle for the Soul of Marriage, a ground-breaking story about an American marriage debate when women first began to vote and run for public office.
Cindy currently divides her time between urban Seattle on the liberal Left Coast and suburban St. Louis, conservative crossroads of the midwestern Heartland and the southern Bible Belt. This biregional life style has helped her to better understand and appreciate different viewpoints within American culture and politics.
Crossing Swords: Mary Baker Eddy vs. Victoria Claflin Woodhull and the Battle for the Soul of Marriage by Cindy Peyser Safronoff is available on Amazon or by special order from your favorite local bookstore.