John Brown's Women by Susan Higginbotham
John Brown’s Women reimagines the lives of an abolitionist family of John Brown. The family prizes actions over words, along the way affecting three courageous women and the nation. Pennsylvania, 1833. Mary Day accepts John Brown’s proposal of marriage. He is a widower with five children - man twice her age - but Mary is a practical person, looking for certain qualities in a person and letting love find its way in later. His father was strong anti-slavery and he taught his children to think likewise - another quality that appeals to Mary. Whatever has befallen the family over the years, including financial hardship and losing children to pestilence, they remain steadfast in their convictions, with their home a stop on what is now called the Underground Railroad. Wealthy (married to John Brown Jr) knows if her husband catches a fever, there is no way of changing his mind. He has just caught the Kansas fever, and Kansas is a place where you can find rich land and strike a blow for free