The story of the young Prudence Crandall's stout-hearted resistance to danger and violence inspirits us in the same way. There really was a patriotic Prudence Crandall who fought bravely against heavy odds for what we now love as one of the bases of our American heritage. She is no imaginary heroine. She was a slender young woman, with bright blue eyes, soft blond hair, and a special way of speaking, quiet, controlled -, "lady-like," as people said in the early part of the 1800's, - but firm as granite. The author of this book has searched letters, memoirs, documents of all kinds, and has found out so much about her, that we can actually see her as she stood, brave as a lion, in her decorous, long, spreading skirts, her well-brushed golden hair gleaming, her bonnet-strings tied neatly under her firm chin.