Overview

A thrilling celebration of a forgotten early American renegade, Not Your Founding Father reconsiders just how radical the American experiment could have been.Early in the morning of October 9, 1776--in the small farming community of Cumberland, Rhode Island, in a house surrounded by cherry trees--twenty-three-year-old Jemima Wilkinson died, and the Public Universal Friend was born. Old Cherry Wilkinson's children had already gained a reputation for scandal. Two of his boys had been dismissed from the local Quaker meeting for joining the colonial militia, and one of the girls was expelled for having a baby out of wedlock. Now, here was another Wilkinson child, riding about the countryside, claiming to be a genderless messenger of God. Yet something about the Public Universal Friend set war-ravaged New England ablaze. The young minister seemed to embody the possibilities offered by the new nation, especially the right to total self-determination. To authorities, however, the minister was ""the devil in petticoats,"" a threat to the men who sought to keep America's power for themselves. And so the Public Universal Friend ventured west to create an Eden on the frontier, a place where everyone would have the right to not only life, liberty, and the pursuit happiness, but also peace and shared prosperity. But into every Eden comes a snake. And soon, financial scams, contested wills, adultery, plagiarism, allegations of murder, and murmurs of another war with England would threaten to destroy this new American utopia.

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9781797195483

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Nina Sankovitch is the acclaimed author of the memoir Tolstoy and the Purple Chair and several works of popular history, including Not Your Founding Father. Her writing has appeared in The New York Times, the Los Angeles Times, and Vogue. Em Grosland (he/they/she) is a transgender, nonbinary actor and artist with over 50 books under their belt. They love giving voice to powerful trans boys and men, rebellious tomboys, nonbinary humans and fantastical creatures, sapphic folks falling in love, and any and all books that challenge late-stage capitalism or highlight the joy and strength of marginalized folks. Em was lucky enough to be read to by their mother, so they narrate from the beliefs that grown-ups and kids all benefit from storytelling and that nothing can replace the human voice. What defined humanity as being a culture instead of a pack was when the first storyteller decided to share. They love finding the very specific life of each character through subtle (and occasionally not so subtle) vocal qualities. Em truly enjoys performing a story more than simply reading it. They pay very close attention to the full arc of the story and the ways in which the character and the narrator learn and grow from the beginning to the end.

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