There are two stories of Clara Colby being told here. The one as a campaigner for women’s suffrage – in which see seems a pivotal second rung figure (we are often told of her progress by Susan B Anthony’s opinion of Clara. The other is as a woman, and messy private lives are often a lot more interesting than a list of the rallys’ speeches and articles someone has written. In this case, much more interesting because Clara had the misfortune of marrying a right bounder, a lawyer and soldier whose many crimes included trying to swindle his whole town out for money for some real estate, buying/adopting one of the few survivors of the Wounded Knee Massacre and then leaving the child to be raised by Clara without any support. Oh and sleeping around and getting someone else pregnant (and then using said person to swindle the US Government out of Cuban reparations -whilst paying Clara no alimony). He, and the Native American daughter, often threaten to take over the book – and whilst the biography is happy to reproduce a lot of personal letters, I did feel that some flavour of Clara’s public oratory and writing was missing.
This is a solid biography, it tells you what you need to know about her life, and is always an engaging read (not least because she had an always engaging life). But it was possibly too narrowly focused on Colby, it might be a book to read if you have first read a history of US suffrage and got a little interested in this odd central figure with thee crooked husband and native American child.
