The Boston Globe newspaper features Cindy Safronoff’s Crossing Swords biography in the Arts section this Sunday in Kate Tuttle’s “The Story Behing the Book” column. The timing of the article is perfect, being just a few days after Hillary Clinton became the first woman to receive the nomination from a major party, since the Crossing Swords story features Victoria Woodhull’s pioneering run for President for the 1872 election, as well as Mary Baker Eddy’s public statement about woman’s inalienable right to hold the highest office in the land.
The Boston Globe coincidentally was founded in 1872, the year of Victoria Woodhull’s famous run for US President and the year of her famous “free love” campaign. It is also the year Mary Baker Eddy began writing her most famous book Science and Health, including a chapter called “Marriage,” which included a response to the ideas about sexuality that Woodhull advocated.
The focus of the article is the book’s tag line, “The untold story of America’s nineteenth-century culture war,” as a description for the marriage debate within the early women’s rights movement, which Cindy Safronoff discovered and is bringing forward with the book Crossing Swords: Mary Baker Eddy vs. Victoria Claflin Woodhull and the Battle for the Soul of Marriage. This historical biography about this history of the institution of marriage in America has won 10 book awards in 7 contests, in categories ranging from women’s issues, to US history, to nonfiction drama.
The Boston Globe feature is also excellent timing, as Safronoff will be doing an author event at Harvard Book Store on Tuesday August 2 at 7PM. This extra exposure should help draw more people from the Boston area to the event.
Thank you Kate Tuttle, and thank you Boston Globe!