A. Louise Staman

From the Eric Hoffer panel of judges: "In 1922 Rebecca Latimer Felton became the first female U.S. Senator for the term of only one day. This accomplishment might seem insignificant if it were not for Felton’s long and active involvement in social reform and ultimately women’s suffrage. Born into the destruction of the plantation south, Felton’s life parallels the reformation of Georgia from the ashes. Staman is an engaging biographer and does well to show us the landscape as well as Felton’s intriguing course of events. You’ll finish this book remembering that there is a seat at the table for everyone, if we strive hard enough and demand the very best of ourselves."

Spanning nearly a century (1835-1930)the life of Rebecca Latimer Felton was profoundly changed by the disastrous effects of the Civil War and Reconstruction upon her beloved state of Georgia. Although she had once been a Southern Belle, then loving wife and mother on a large cotton plantation, she began to step out of the traditions expected by southern chivalry and tradition. With her husband's encouragement, she became a woman politician forty-seven years before she got the right to vote. A tireless crusader, her attempts at political and civil reform are set against the backdrop of a state in violent chaos. Sherman's matches, Reconstruction's graft, one-party corruption, the KKK, lynchers, hallelujah evangelicals, chain-gang convicts, the sneering H.L. Mencken "unsexed" suffragists, WCTU crusaders, and something possibly worse than anything else -- a tiny insect called the boll Weevil -- all strut or crawl or sweep across the pages of this work.