Books UNDER CONSTRUCTION

Where Two Rivers Meet, A Novel of Minnesota Main Street Women, published winter 2023, Heritage Books –A prequel to Scruples & Drams and Pins & Needles, Abigail Perkins Robinson Camp Porter’s story begins in Stowe, Vermont.  She is married to George Camp a salesman and wanderer to California where he along with friends twice try to make it rich in the goldfields.  He doesn’t make it the second time out there.  He dies in Marysville and is buried there.  Abigail and her son rely on family to survive.  Yet this is contrary to Abigail’s wishes.  She wants to be independent in an era when women are managed by their husbands or fathers.  She along with many other women is tired of not having her own rights.  She takes the offer her brother-in-law, the first doctor in Wright County, gives, which is to become Clearwater village’s hotel housekeeper.  She becomes the first white woman in the area, amidst hundreds of men starting over in a new land recently opened west of the Mississippi.  Here, where two rivers meet, she faces the challenges that help her develop the skills to become independent.  narrative  takes  place  in  the  Mississippi  River  town  of Clearwater,  Minnesota.  Daughter  of  village  founders  Tom  Porter  and Abigail Camp Porter, she owns a millinery store upstairs of Boutwell’s Hardware  Store.  From  here,  she  can  keep  her  eye  on  the  comings  and goings of the village. What she sees causes quite a commotion, but what she hears over her newly installed telephone could spell trouble.

In this sequel to Scruples & Drams, readers see what life is like in the late 1800  and  early  1900’s  for  the  “new  women”  who  were  educated, strong-minded,  and  holding  down  careers.  Women  like  Maude Porter   have concerns about the health and well-being of many women who are over-worked,  under-educated  about  their  bodies,  and  become  pregnant  way too often. While Maude understands that suffrage and equal rights are important, she also sees how the consumption of alcohol ruins families and communities and causes some men to be brutal.

At first Maude believes education is the key to ridding the town of the  many  drunks  and  their  brawls  outside  Quinn’s  Saloon.  Ultimately,

though,  she  and  others,  men  and  women,  come  to  realize  that prohibition  is  the  only  answer  to  setting  their  world  in  order.

For Clearwater, the answer is clear: shut down Pat Quinn’s Saloon.