Diane EickhoffRecensioner

This biography is really informative, and well written. Diane Eickhoff recounts the life and fight for women's rights of Clarina Nichols. Through Clarina's life, Diane Eickhoff also portrays how women were living at that time, their rights, their lack of rights, as well as their difficulties.

I have read a lot of books about women's history in the US and I don't remember hearing much about Clarina Nichols. That's a shame, because she was apparently an important figure in the suffrage movement and during the first wave of feminism. I really enjoyed learning about her life. This book is well-written, engaging and provides a good amount of detail about Ms. Nichols and all that she accomplished to push women toward equality. The writing style is more like a novel, which would make it more appealing to younger people. If you have an interest in this period of history, I highly recommend this book.

An exciting story about an early leader in abolition and women's rights, one who, for that matter, continued to support black male suffrage even after it became clear that women's suffrage was being sacrificed for fear that both could not pass at once. Far too few people can name more 19th century women's suffragists than Susan B. Anthony and perhaps Elizabeth Cady Stanton (maybe Sojourner Truth at a stretch, but passing familiarity with her is more likely to include only her status as an escaped slave and abolitionist). When I requested this book from ER, I didn't realize that it was a YA adaptation of a fuller length adult biography that had come out ten years before, and I didn't figure it out until I was halfway through the book and discovered a bookmark advertising the line of YA history books. Without knowing it was meant for YA, I found the prose a bit simplistic, but once I realized the intended audience, it made sense and the style seemed appropriate. I hope to have time to read the adult version, Revolutionary Heart, soon, but this was certainly worth reading once.

I don't know much about the women's right's movement. I should know a lot more, being a women, but I don't. And I admitably probably take our rights for granted, while complaining about how the boy's get favored where I work all the time, even though there are 5 times as many girls, and we do 99% of the same heavy lifting that the boys do.

This book, to me, is more a book about the women's rights movement then about Clarina herself, though naturally, since the book is named after her, there is a lot about her, too, but it's mostly about her role in the women's movements, then about her life as a whole (for example, the author talks a lot about Clarina's first marriage, but everything she writes about the marriage she relates to Clarina's future role in the movement). I wish there was more about Clarina's personal life, but the focus of the book isn't about that.

I was greatly surprised & interested in read about how in some small way, the women's right movement started in Worcester, which is where my husband grew up & my in-law's still live!

I also thought it was very cool that Clarina, a lifelong knitter, received yarn from her fans, after helping a woman on the train to keep her children!

I am only giving the book four stars, because (like I said) I wish there was more info about her personal life, but also because after a while, all of her talks and speeches and the various organizations she belonged to started to run together in my head...

Clearly written and informative. Excellent young adult book informing young women of the struggles and importance of the suffrage movement. Clarina Nichols is not a household name but it should be. I was impressed by the sacrifices she made in service to forwarding the rights of women. She fought for equality on many fronts: property rights, inheritances, child custody, abuse by husbands and voting equality.
She realized that unless women had the right to vote the policies and lack of legal rights for women would not change.
I very much recommend this book for the young adult category. The only reason I did not give it a higher rating is that I am not a young adult and found the level of writing simplistic and somewhat repetitive.

Clarine Nichols spent her life working for the rights of women. Not only voting but the right to own property and to care for her children. Born in Vermont in 1810 she and all 7 brothers and sisters survived into adulthood. She married justin Nichols who came from a well-established Baptist family. She later divorces him and marries Nichols who was several years older than herself. She wrote for Nichols newspaper and became the editor. She became involved with the temperance movement and worked along with such leaders as Elizabeth Cady Stanton to establish the women's right to vote. She moved to Kansas and was involved in Kansas becoming a state and passing the right of women to own property.

This young adult biography is adapted from the author's adult biography Revolutionary Heart.The book follows Clarina life from birth until her death in 1885. From Vermont to California she worked to see women gained property rights as well as the vote.This was not an easy life and the author provides examples of efforts she took to promote these ideas. As a Kansas born women I found the chapters of Kansas territory most interesting and informative. The last chapters share a short history of the woman's movement up to the passage of the 19 amendment.
An excellent book to share with both genders to show the efforts taken on behalf of women to become equal citizens of this country. Especially important during this election year where a women has gained to right to be the President of the United States.

iane Eickhoff helps to educated young adults and older by creating another version of her book, Revolutionary Heart about Clarina Nichols. Somehow, I missed that book but was delighted to read Clarina Nichols: Frontier Crusader for Women’s Rights. This is timely book to read because we still don’t have equal pay for equal work and there are still politicians who want to make it more difficult to vote.

Clarina’s life is one of courage, resilience and strength. I was not familiar with her life and contribution. Of course, I knew about Susan B. Anthony, Sojourner Truth, Lucrezia Mott (an ancestor) and Elizabeth Cady Stanton but not with her or many of the names in the back of the book in the chapter, A Quick History of the Women’s Rights Movement.

Clarina’s empathy for other women in dire situations came from her first marriage. Her husband Justin Carpenter did not take on the responsibility of supporting his family, he was an attorney but did not want to practice. She was forced to piece together money for food for children by taking in sewing and boarders. He deserted her and took the children. She enlisted the help of her father in law and brother in law to get them back.

She knew that women should not have go through with what she did and started writing her arguments using a pseudonym in a paper in a different town. She was very smart and was skillful in using humor to get her views across. She was on her way to becoming a crusader for women’s rights. She endured many hardships but never gave up. This is just the beginning of her story.

I am thankful that Diane Eickhoff took an extra step by writing this book to help other people be aware of Clarina Nichols' contribution. This book is full of interesting pictures of Clarina Nichols' life, a section for further reading, notes and acknowledgments. It is well written, never boring and always inspiring.

I received a finished copy of this book as a win from LibraryThing from the publishers in exchange for a fair book review. My thoughts and feelings in this review are totally my own.

This book came as a wonderful surprise to me. I usually avoid book designated YA because I've found so many of them to be superficially written and "dumbed down" for what some authors believe teenagers will read. This book was written in simple enough language for the middle school to high school reader, but still told the story of this amazing woman in a way that held my attention all the way through, and I'm a grandmother of the ages in question. Nichols was an early pioneer in the women's movement who never received the notice she deserved, maybe because the well known heroines like Susan B. Anthony et al, were together on the East coast whereas Nichols started there but moved west first to Wisconsin, then Kansas and finally California, places that seem to fall off the radar of popular history. I would highly recommend this book to anyone of any age who is interested in the fight for women's rights which is still going on in many places.

Pretty powerful story about the crusade for Women's Rights. Clarina Nichols was an amazing woman. It was thru the suffering of women like her that today's women have the rights taken for granted. Back in Clarina's time women had no rights and were beholden to their husbands for everything. Women could own no property and upon marriage her husband took ownership of whatever the wife possessed. It is unimaginable that without these women fighting for equal right your mother, sister, daughter, grandmother would stil be living under this "slave" state. I am grateful to these brave and foresighted women for what they did for women in the United States. Clarina traveled extensively fighting for the Temperance movement and then the Suffragette movement during her lifetime.

Earlier in March, I finished Eva Flynn's fabulous historical novel, The Renegade Queen, about Victoria Woodhull, a woman I knew only as the first woman to run for president. (She was so much more! Someday I'll get to that review!)

Following that read was this Young Adult biography about Clarina Nichols, a figure totally unfamiliar to me --a smart, forward-thinking woman in the early 19th century who fought for abolition, suffrage, and freedom for all families. Somehow, Susan B. Anthony has become the figure most familiar to all of us for her transformative work, but women like Nichols were just as important in progressing the causes of freedom and justice.

Needless to say, Nichols, and this book, would have been exactly the kind of thing I would have gulped up in middle school.

Born in Vermont, Nichols was from a frugal but successful family that valued their smart, empathetic daughter. Clarina was given a "traditional" women's education, but her parents also encouraged her reading and writing, and obviously admired her moral compass and strength in framing arguments. As a child, she accompanied her father during his tenure as a "poormaster", a kind of judge/aid giver, and she heard first hand the horrific trials that the poor and disenfranchised experienced. With these seeds planted, Nichols aspired to use her gifts not only to raise a family but to also enact change.

Through a troublesome marriage, and a happy one, Nichols pursued her passions and used her gifts to sway the hearts and minds of her fellow neighbors and Americans, advocating for the right's of women and the abolition of slavery. Most daring, Nichols moved herself -- without her husband! -- to Kansas as part of the abolition movement to ensure Kansas vote against becoming a slave state. When she realized the great changes she and her family could enact, she moved everyone there, and became a beacon there for liberty and freedom. (This is the setting of the historical novel I'm struggling with, so this book was an unexpectedly useful read for me!)

This book is actually a YA version of Eickhoff's biography on Nichols. I don't know if Eickhoff has experience writing YA but the tone of this read felt more middle grade to me than high school -- I would have loved this in the 5th or 6th grade. (By sophomore year of high school, I'd probably have attempted Eickhoff's bio.) Regardless, I greatly enjoyed and appreciated what Eickhoff offered in this read: she didn't shy away from some of the more depressing parts of 19th century life for women, and she offered great context for many of the events in the book. (Her explanation of mass movements on page 27, and in particular, the movement for women's suffrage, takes two paragraphs and is really stellar for articulating how and why some social movements bubble up, seemingly from nowhere.)

This book is loaded with photos and illustrations, and includes a brief history of the women's movement, detailed footnotes, and a comprehensive index. I read an e-book version which was wonderfully formatted with hyperlinking of footnotes that made "flipping" back and forth easy.

I was excited to learn that the publisher of this book, Quindaro Press, focuses on social justice and history for young adults, and I'm keeping an eye on their offerings as I know many young readers who will love their stuff (I certainly would have!).

A highly recommend read for anyone who has a YA reader in their life who is interested in justice, American history, and fascinating figures.

The life of women’s right crusader Clarina Nichols is the focus of “Revolutionary Heart” by editor-turned-historian Diane Eickhoff. Through Nichols life, we not only see the accomplishments of a very determined woman but also see the history of the three great antebellum reform movements.

The life of Clarina Nichols begins at one end of the country (Vermont) to the other (California), but a very important part of her life was spent in helping settle and attempt to influence the formation of the State of Kansas. Eickhoff using recovered sources that had not been known of since Nichols’ death in 1885, brings Nichol life in an entertaining and engaging manner that keeps the reader manner. Eickhoff follows Nichols’ life growing up in Vermont and her troublesome first marriage that helped focus her crusading efforts in the antebellum women’s right movement that was launched by circumstances in her second marriage. While detailing Nichols’ efforts on women’s rights, Eickhoff makes it a point to show Nichol’s as a mother not just as an aside but as one of the main themes throughout the book. And through Nichols, Eickhoff helped bring into the focus how the three major antebellum reform movements—abolition, suffrage, and temperance—were interwoven with one another for a 30 year period.

“Revolutionary Heart” pacts a lot of material in 277 pages in a well-written biography of an under-recognized leader of the early women’s rights movement in the 1850s thanks not only to Eickhoff’s writing but also her background of editing. The life and work of Clarina Nichols helps give context to the 1850s and 1860s when the popular view focuses on slavery and the Civil War. I highly recommend this book for anyone wanting to learn more about the early women’s right movement.

I received a free copy of this book through Goodreads First Reads program.

This is non-fiction history written at its best. Revolutionary Heart is both well researched and skillfully written to keep the reader's attention. And if you live in Vermont, Kansas, or northern California you have an additional reason to read this book because Clarina has roots in your part of the country.

This is a history of an intelligent woman who moved west, lived through the Civil War, and associated with leaders of the women's suffrage movement. She was thus a witness to the cutting edge of mid-nineteen century American life. And as it turns out, she also left a trail of published newspaper articles and copies of letters to her friends and associates that have survived until today.

I recommend this book to anyone who has interest in the history of the Civil War era, the American western expansion, the women's suffrage movement, or the lives of ordinary Americans who lived over 100 years ago.

In terms of full disclosure, I am a personal acquaintance of the author. I read the book in January, 2006, soon after it was published