Terrible Virtue

January 25, 2016
Feldman’s latest (after 2014’s The Unwitting) chronicles the life of Planned Parenthood founder Margaret Sanger from her point of view, with occasional shifts to the people in her orbit. Raised in a large family headed up by a father who encouraged radical views, Margaret becomes a nurse, reluctantly marries, and has children. She gravitates, with her husband, Bill, toward socialist causes. It soon becomes clear, much to Bill’s chagrin, that monogamy isn’t for her. As Margaret struggles to publish information on preventing pregnancy and open a clinic for women, she blossoms into a media-savvy activist who wittingly hides her dalliances while brandishing a motherly public image. Feldman successfully paints Margaret as someone who is so wrapped up in her causes and fame that she neglects her family. As Margaret’s fight has her fleeing the U.S. to avoid prosecution and hobnobbing with well-heeled contacts abroad, the country’s attitudes toward women’s rights slowly change. While the book focuses on many life events, such as her second marriage to a wealthy man and the role she played in securing funding for research on the Pill, everything whizzes by a bit too quickly. Agent: Emma Sweeney, Emma Sweeney Agency.

March 1, 2016

In her latest novel, the award-winning Feldman (The Unwitting) has created a compelling portrait of Margaret Sanger (1879-1966), the famous champion of birth control. The first-person narrative, with short excerpts in the voices of friends, family, and lovers, portrays Sanger as a complex woman, torn between her family and cause. Married, she was also unfaithful and promiscuous. Her obsessions meant she spent little time with her children; her sons felt neglected, and her daughter died young. Yet the author also depicts in compelling detail the hardship imposed on large, desperately poor families by the lack of contraception. She further captures the excitement of Sanger's involvement in the political and social movements of the times. The only unsettling note is a trite dismissal of Sanger's reputation for being a eugenicist. VERDICT Feldman draws on extensive research to tackle with aplomb the difficult task of writing a novel about a woman whose life is well known and whose story remains controversial decades after her death. Those interested in the history of the women's movement and its impact on today's world will find lots to ponder here. An excellent choice for book groups.--Jan Marry, Williamsburg Regional Lib., VA

Copyright 2016 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

January 15, 2016
Margaret Sanger, the revolutionary fighter for women's contraceptive rights and founder of Planned Parenthood, joins the pantheon of figures whose lives have been turned into historical novels. Born into grinding poverty, Sanger observed, keenly, the toll that pregnancy after pregnancy took on her exhausted mother, who had 13 children. An escape from her childhood home and the opportunity for formal education, both provided by her devoted older sisters, exposed her to the possibilities of a life unfettered by destitution and despair. A devotion to political activism as well as the exploration of all sorts of personal freedoms became the hallmarks of Sanger's tumultuous life, which she narrates in a lively first-person voice, which Feldman occasionally intersperses with sections addressed to Sanger from her nearest and dearest, including children, lovers, and husbands. A spectacular tension between the demands of motherhood and the zeal with which she pursued all of her passions--political as well as sexual--forced Sanger to choose, on more than one occasion, between being present with her children or forging onward in her battle to provide access to birth control, and arguably better lives, for women in dire circumstances similar to those of her childhood. The choices Sanger made to further her crusade were not without cost, and Feldman deftly illuminates the terrible tolls (both inflicted and self-inflicted) they took upon her heroine in a narration that is elegiac as well as triumphant. Cameo appearances by the great names of Sanger's time add notes of gossipy interest for the historically aware reader while placing the events of the novel in a broader social context. Feldman's (The Unwitting, 2014, etc.) well-researched treatment of the often tragic realities of the life of a formative figure in American social history offers much to contemporary readers living through current culture wars.

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Starred review from March 1, 2016
Margaret Sanger, early twentieth-century pioneer in birth control, women's-rights reformer, and founder of Planned Parenthood, comes to life in Feldman's timely historical novel. The story makes it eminently clear that Sanger was a whirlwind of conflicting emotions and hasty decisions, as well as a maddeningly stubborn crusader for reproductive rights, although her tumultuous sex life and inconstant treatment of her husbands and children often undermined her efforts toward social change. How her terrible virtue affects those around her is reflected in newspaper headlines and poignant letters from family members, which form an important part of the story. In fleshing out such a controversial activist, Feldman compellingly portrays the difficult choices confronting women living in a man's world. Without glossing over Sanger's abrasive personality or hard-to-swallow eugenicist opinions, the author effectively pulls readers into historical New York, where, as a nurse, Sanger found her calling and shared the vivid story that became her clarion call of Sadie Sachs, who died from a self-induced abortion after desperately seeking some method of birth control. This immersive, moving, and thought-provoking book is worthy of the intense discussions it's sure to spark. Another excellent biographical novel with similar themes is Jackson Taylor's The Blue Orchard (2010). Readers in search of further insight on Sanger's life and work should try Jean H. Baker's biography, Margaret Sanger: A Life of Passion (2011).(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2016, American Library Association.)