Mary Walton

PRAISE FOR A WOMAN'S CRUSADE

"Drawing upon press accounts, original papers, and books written by contemporaries of Paul's, Walton is able to give her accounts...a colorful immediacy....Walton's book offers lessons in the tenacity, courage, and fierce discipline needed to overcome the obstacles pioneers often face." --The Philadelphia Inquirer.

"Mary Walton...has captured Paul's fire, her slow burn in A Woman's Crusade. This story is a reminder of the perseverance, the gall, the intelligence it took to obtain what now seems an inalienable right, an obvious pillar of any democracy." --Los Angeles Times

"Mary Walton delivers an engrossing account of one of the most dramatic episodes in American History--the culmination of the seven-decade quest for woman suffrage."--Marla R. Miller, author of Betsy Ross and the Making of America

"Nearly a half century before Martin Luther King brought Gandhian methods to bear on racial segregation, Alice Paul used non-violent protest to win full voting rights for American women; but few Americans know about her. Mary Walton vividly brings her to life again in this brilliant, important and highly readable book. America 's understanding of its history will be all the richer for it."--Gene Roberts, The Race Beat, 2007 Pulitzer Prize winner for History

"It's astonishing that an individual of such courage and accomplishment would have to be "rescued" from obscurity, but that's precisely what Mary Walton has done with this dynamic and entertaining biography. Walton sweeps the reader along in Alice Paul's seven-year crusade for suffrage, all the way to its nail-biting conclusion. This is a wonderful and important book."-Thomas Kunkel, author of Genius in Disguise: Harold Ross of The New Yorker

"Mary Walton's exciting, carefully researched biography offers a rare behind-the-scenes look at one of the most intriguing personalities of the 20th century. Walton helps us appreciate Paul's leadership and aggressive vigor in a story that reveals all the drama, doubt, and grandeur of true history." --Robert P. J. Cooney, Jr., author of Winning the Vote: The Triumph of the American Woman Suffrage Movement

"Mary Walton has written a passionate history of one of my heroines (and distant relative), Alice Paul - a fiery feminist who understood political strategy and the value of a sound-bite better than anyone. All Americans should read this book to learn more about one of our most extraordinary and dynamic leaders."--Congresswoman Carolyn B. Maloney

"Richly endowed with research . . . detailed, absorbing . . . I value the book for introducing her to the next generation of feminists with a taste for revolution."--Ms Magazine
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MARY WALTON WRITES:

For most of my professional life I have been a newspaper reporter, turning out news features, profiles and breaking news, while also writing non-fiction books that had their genesis in news stories. Six years ago, at the suggestion of an editor, I turned to a historical epic, the final, dramatic push for woman suffrage.

Alice, the brilliant leader of the suffrage militants, was a brilliant, young, iron-willed Quaker committed to nonviolence, with a talent for organizing and publicity. When four years of lobbying, parades, rallies and electioneering failed to budge Congress, she and her followers picketed the White House, were attacked, arrested, force fed and brutalized. After the amendment was ratified in 1920, the battle was little remembered and little taught. In 2004 Alice received a measure of recognition with the HBO movie Iron Jawed Angels [Hillary Swank played Alice.].

Writing history when there are no survivors to offer first-hand accounts is not so different from journalism. It’s much like being an investigative reporter when no one tells you anything and you have to dig into letters, documents and memoirs to ferret out the story.

I was introduced to journalism many years ago by Brenda Starr, the glamorous red-headed comic strip adventuress whose life as a reporter was characterized by love, danger and a colorful, sexy wardrobe. Decades later, when I met the creator of the Brenda Starr comic strip, artist Dale Messick, I learned I was not the only girl-child to find inspiration in Brenda during a period when real-life role models were rare.

During the 1970s and ‘80s, I was a staff writer at the Philadelphia Inquirer. When the newspaper industry began a period of retrenchment in the early 1990’s, I left to write books and magazine articles.