Overview

Shortly after its 1925 publication, Gertrude Beasley's ferociously eloquent feminist memoir was banned and she herself disappeared under mysterious circumstances. Though British Nobel Prize winner Bertrand Russell called My First Thirty Years ""truthful, which is illegal"" and Larry McMurtry pronounced it the finest Texas book of its era, Beasley's words have been all but inaccessible for almost a century--until now. Beasley penned one of the most brutally honest coming-of-age historical memoirs, one which strips away romantic notions about frontier women's lives at the turn of the twentieth century. With characteristic ferocity, Beasley rejected a life of dependence, persisting in her studies and becoming first a teacher, then a principal, then a college instructor, and finally a foreign correspondent. Along the way, Beasley becomes a strident activist for women's rights, socialism, and sex education. She is undaunted by authority figures but secretly ashamed of her origins and yearns to be loved. My First Thirty Years is profoundly human and shockingly candid, a rallying cry that cost its author her career and her freedom. Her story deserves to be heard. Contains mature themes.

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Gertrude Beasley (1892-1955) was an American writer and memoirist. A feminist, her controversial 1925 autobiography, My First Thirty Years, received some favorable reviews but was also suppressed, and she soon after disappeared. Tavia Gilbert, a six-time Audie Award nominee and multiple Earphones and Parents' Choice Award-winning producer, narrator, and writer, has appeared on stage and in film. Library Journal said of the highly acclaimed actress, ""as close as you can get to a full cast narration with a solo voice."" Tavia has narrated more than 250 multicast and single-voice audiobooks.

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