Moved by a meeting with a family unable to accept the loss of a son they hoped would somehow return to them, award-winning author Stephanie Powell Watts drew up the idea for her first novel – a story about the things in our past that haunt us, that continue to call and constrain us from moving ahead. 

At 23, while serving as the youngest school principal in the state, Alice Chenoweth was excoriated in Ohio’s newspapers in 1876 for having an affair with the state’s married commissioner of common schools. Rather than retreat in shame, she changed her name, moved to New York City, and spent the rest of her life challenging the double standards of gender.