Kathleen Williams Renk re-imagines the life of novelist Kate Chopin.
In 1850s' St. Louis, five-year-old Katy O'Flaherty's father sends her to a strict convent school to stifle her precocious nature. Thus begins the life of the girl who becomes a progressive, feminist, "new woman" writer who shocks the world with her novel The Awakening, which Willa Cather derided as the "Creole Bovary.
Kate O'Flaherty Chopin spent her childhood in St. Louis during the Civil War where she witnessed enslaved people sold on the courthouse steps. Raised by courageous women, including a French great-grandmother who ran trading boats on the Mississippi and who believed in justice for all, it's no surprise that Kate grew into a woman who rode bareback, smoked cigarettes, dressed audaciously, and wrote about taboo topics. In other words, she defied every expectation for women in the middle-late Victorian period.
Experience the vibrant and colorful world along the Mississippi and the unique Louisiana 1800s' culture that permeates Chopin's writings and her approach to life.
