Publisher's Synopsis
LOOSENING CORSETS: Gold Medalist in the IPPY Book Awards, an Eric Hoffer WINNER, and NOMINATED for Georgia Book of the Year. Born into the destruction of the plantation south, Rebecca Felton's life parallels the reformation of Georgia from the ashes. Staman is an engaging biographer and does well to show us the landscape as well as Felton's intriguing course of events. The life of Rebecca reads like a novel, revealing the forgotten story of one of the most remarkable women in history. A Georgian born in 1835, Felton became the first woman Senator of the United States in 1922, at age 87. A tireless crusader, her attempts at political and civil reform are set against the backdrop of a state in violent chaos. Sherman's fires, Reconstruction's graft, the KKK, lynchers, rabid evangelicals, chain-gang convicts, the sneering H.L. Mencken, "unsexed" suffragists, WCTU crusaders, and worst of all, a tiny insect called the boll weevil - all strut or crawl or sweep across the pages of this work.
