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A review by jhbandcats
The Woman They Could Not Silence: One Woman, Her Incredible Fight for Freedom, and the Men Who Tried to Make Her Disappear by Kate Moore
challenging
dark
emotional
informative
sad
tense
medium-paced
4.25
This book was great. However, I really wanted to like it even more - I wanted to give it five stars. Ultimately I didn’t because occasionally it would devolve into histrionics. The story was so powerful that literary flourishes were unnecessary and distracting.
That said, Wow. What a book. How is it that Elizabeth Packard is not a household name? She was extraordinary. Committed to an insane asylum because her husband found her outspokenness troublesome, she worked for three years to be freed, then worked the rest of her life to achieve equality for women, safety for mental patients, and the right of a mother to have custody of her children.
The author relies on diaries, letters, newspapers, and trial transcripts. Everything she writes has been thoroughly researched. Her work here is exceptional.
Having found Radium Girls equally important, I hope that Kate Moore continues to write. Her works are essential to understanding the history of the ordinary American in the late 18th - early 19th centuries.
That said, Wow. What a book. How is it that Elizabeth Packard is not a household name? She was extraordinary. Committed to an insane asylum because her husband found her outspokenness troublesome, she worked for three years to be freed, then worked the rest of her life to achieve equality for women, safety for mental patients, and the right of a mother to have custody of her children.
The author relies on diaries, letters, newspapers, and trial transcripts. Everything she writes has been thoroughly researched. Her work here is exceptional.
Having found Radium Girls equally important, I hope that Kate Moore continues to write. Her works are essential to understanding the history of the ordinary American in the late 18th - early 19th centuries.
Content Warnings
Graphic: Domestic abuse, Gaslighting, Injury/Injury detail, Confinement, Excrement, Blood, Suicidal thoughts, Grief, Schizophrenia/Psychosis , Self harm, Kidnapping, Mental illness, Misogyny, Bullying, Death, Dementia, Emotional abuse, Forced institutionalization, Abandonment, Chronic illness, Classism, Physical abuse, Torture, Medical trauma, Racism, Sexism, and Violence