Feminism for the Ages: How My Great Grandmother Became a Character in My Novel

Estimated reading time: 11 minutes

A treasure trove of letters from the early 1900’s becomes fodder for an author’s book that will inspire today’s women and activists

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In 1892, when my great-grandmother Mary Davies was 20 years old, she took a trip from Topeka, Kansas, to Pontardulais, the village in Wales where her immigrant father had grown up. In 1976, when I was 21, I traveled from Poughkeepsie, New York, to Iran, Afghanistan, Pakistan, and India, to teach English and study meditation.

After four months in Britain, Mary returned to the U.S. and found a job in New York City with the publisher Dodd, Mead and Company. After a year and a half in Asia, I moved to Manhattan and worked for Springer Publishing.

You can see why, in my fifties, when I started digging into her travel diary and discovered the many letters she saved, I felt a kinship with Mary.

I often get the spooky feeling she saved these items for me, so I could write about her. Not that she knew her great-granddaughter would be a writer, but I feel her words have been entrusted to me. 

That’s why I am anxious about having used her as the model for a character in , a