Quaker Charity Wright Cook, daughter of feminist Rachel Wells Wright, emerges from rape, disownment, and misogyny to become one of the most prominent itinerant Quaker ministers during a time of racism and war in the colonial eighteenth century.
In 1749 as part of the eighteenth-century Great Quaker Migration, young Rachel Wells Wright (1720-1771) and her husband, John, traveled some four hundred miles from Maryland to the back country of North Carolina. Along with other colonial Friends, they began a new Quaker settlement, Cane Creek, determined to live their faith in the rolling hills of the frontier. They raised fourteen children, one of whom is Charity Wright Cook (1742-1822). Raped by a Quaker youth when she was not quite fifteen years old and disowned a few months later for not doing enough to prevent the assault, Charity dealt with the aftermath while traveling extensively in ministry throughout the South, then North, and finally Europe. She lived at a time when Friends struggled to follow their faith and were being attacked from all sides and then with derision and division among themselves. Notables such as John Woolman, Betsy Ross, Anthony Benezet, Elias Hicks, and the Coffin family are woven into her story, as are the accounts of enslaved and freed people who lived within Friends' communities and attended Quaker meetings (despite being relegated to the benches at the back of the room).
Themes embedded in this historical novel are relevant today: Charity's being blamed for her sexual assault, which results in lack of self-esteem and incessant travel. Other themes are pacifism of Friends during the raging Revolutionary War and the belief in racial equality when the institution of slavery was commonplace.
Written to impart Quaker history, the novel can also serve as a resource for those whose relatives were Friends, as well as those who are interested in the lives of eighteenth-century women.