Ilyon Woo explains The Great Divorce: A Nineteenth-Century Mother's Extraordinary Fight Against Her Husband, The Shakers, And He

Harvard Book Store is pleased to welcome writer and historian Ilyon Woo for a conversation about her first book, The Great Divorce: A Nineteenth-Century Mother's Extraordinary Fight against Her Husband, the Shakers, and Her Times.
On a peak fall day in 1814, when America was a nation at war, a young mother named Eunice Chapman returned to her home in New York State to discover that her three young children had been carried off by her estranged, alcoholic husband. He had taken them, she learned, to live among a celibate, religious people known as the Shakers.
This should have been the end of the story. Married women were considered "civilly dead" before the law, and were unable to own property or even testify against their husbands-much less lay claim to their children, who were the exclusive property of their fathers. But Eunice was determined to win back her children, no matter the cost.
Thus began an epic five-year quest in which Eunice single-handedly challenged her husband, the Shakers, and the law in her fight to reclaim her children.
A famously petite and lovely woman, Eunice courted politicians in the New York State Legislature, penned thrilling captivity narratives, and pitted herself against not only the dominant culture of her times, but also another charismatic woman: Mother Lucy Wright, the supreme head of the Shakers and one of the most powerful women in the country.
In its confrontation of some of the country's most fundamental debates-religious freedom, feminine virtue, the sanctity of marriage-Eunice's case struck a nerve with Americans plagued by uncertainty in the early days of the republic (luminaries Thomas Jefferson and Martin Van Buren among them). All of Albany was rapt during the uproarious hearings on this case, in which sex, among other topics, was so hotly discussed that lawmakers walked out of the House. The case's culmination in a stunning legislative decision and a terrifying mob attack sent shockwaves through the Shaker community and the nation beyond.
"Ilyon Woo's The Great Divorce is much more than a fascinating account of a woman's trailblazing battle for her children. By delving so deeply into the sources, Woo brings the past to life in all its wonderful strangeness, complexity, and verve. This is what history is all about." -Nathaniel Philbrick (In the Heart of the Sea and Mayflower)
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