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Impertinences: Selected Writings of Elia Peattie, a Journalist in the Gilded Age

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Impertinences features the selected writings of Elia Peattie from 1888 to 1896 when she wrote for the Omaha World Herald and reveals a woman who knows her own mind and is not hesitant to express her views. In a world where women were still more often than not of less influence than men, except in the raising of children, Elia Peattie championed not just women's causes, as well she might, but spoke out in her writing about all human concerns. She abhorred the massacre at Wounded Knee, praised the couple who took in orphans by the dozens and gave them love and affection as well as food and shelter. She wrote of the year of mourning for woman and children, a swathing of black they were subject to wear, while the men simply wore black armbands. She wrote about a so-called Christian Science healer, the Omaha Crèche, a day nursery where single parents could leave their children while they worked, prostitution, the beet farmer, the Omaha stockyards, and many other subjects and was instrumental in the organization of the Federated Women's Clubs.
A prolific writer, besides her numerous editorials, Peattie wrote short stories, fiction, children's stories, poems, essays, and articles. She was a loving wife and mother and had many friends, including Kate M. Cleary, another Nebraska writer. (Bloomfield also wrote her story, simply titled Kate M. Cleary.)
To me this was not a fast read, but one to read more at one's leisure, editorial by editorial as we might read a daily editorial in our papers.
Eunice boeve, author of Ride a Shadowed Trail