I just finished Kate Manning’s My Notorious Life. What a read.

In the mid 1800s an impoverished New York mother dies in childbirth. She leaves behind three siblings who are shipped off to remote county agencies that split them up. The eldest, Axie nurtures them until the agencies take them away.

Axie sets out to make her way on her own, all the while continuing a futile effort to find her baby brother and sister. She finds a helper’s position with a “female Doctor”, a midwife, who advises women, poor and rich, in all aspects of women’s difficulties, including “unblockings”, a euphemism for abortions.

Eventually, Axie takes over the practice and becomes incredibly successful. But waiting for her are the men of established “morality” who come down on her in their full and righteous dudgeon. Her world thunders down on her in a form of hell, the righteous slamming their full power onto Axie’s husband and her young daughter,

My Notorious Life is wonderful read, one that can sink readers to their knees when they acknowlede the distances we’ve come.