My Notorious Life
A Novel
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- USD 13.99
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- USD 13.99
Descripción editorial
Inspired by a real midwife who became one of the most controversial figures in Victorian New York City, this “action-packed, thought-provoking page-turner” (The New York Times) is an unforgettable tale—a love story and a family saga, featuring a charismatic and passionate woman who became a pioneer for women's rights and changed the lives of countless others.
Meet the incomparable Axie Muldoon. Axie’s story begins on the streets of 1860s New York. The impoverished child of Irish immigrants, she grows up to become one of the wealthiest and most controversial women of her day. In vivid prose, Axie recounts how she is forcibly separated from her mother and siblings, apprenticed to a doctor, and how she and her husband parlay the sale of a few bottles of “Lunar Tablets for Female Complaint” into a thriving midwifery business. Flouting convention and defying the law in the name of women’s rights, Axie rises from grim tenement rooms to the splendor of a mansion on Fifth Avenue, amassing wealth while learning over and over never to trust a man who says “trust me.”
When her services attract outraged headlines, Axie finds herself on a collision course with a crusading official—Anthony Comstock, founder of the Society for the Suppression of Vice. It will take all of Axie’s power to outwit him in the fight to preserve her freedom and everything she holds dear. Inspired by the true history of an infamous physician who was once called “the Wickedest Woman in New York,” Kate Manning is “writing in the venerable tradition of Stephen Crane…those social reformers knew that a powerful tale with memorable characters could draw us into the heat of social debates like nothing else” (The Washington Post).
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Loosely based on the life of Ann Trow Lohman (aka Madame Restell), the infamous abortionist who became known as "the Wickedest Woman in New York," Manning's second rags-to-riches novel (after Whitegirl) nimbly resurrects the bold woman behind the scandalous headlines. Manning's Axie Muldoon endured a scrappy childhood as the fierce and foul-mouthed eldest daughter of Irish immigrants living amidst the filth of lower Manhattan. She began her midwifery apprenticeship at 14, and learned when to administer "Lunar Tablets for the relief of Female Obstruction," before becoming the renowned Madame X with a thriving business (her newspaper ad reads "Renowned Female Physician") of her own. Manning paints a vivid portrait of this daring yet deeply compassionate woman who is willing to flout convention and defy the law in the name of women's reproductive rights. While Muldoon's public battle against the "lying weevils and scandalmongers of the New York press" as well as old codger Comstock the Chairman of the Society for the Suppression of Vice take center stage throughout the latter half, it's the details of Madame X's private life, told in her thick Irish brogue about the search for her long-lost siblings, her fiery relationship with her devoted husband, and her growth as a mother that lend a human face to a this sensational figure.
