"Esther's Pillow" Tracks Woman's Fight"

Last week, I wrote about a book that chronicles the heroism of an 18th century Virginia woman who had been kidnapped by a band of Indians and taken all the way to the Mississippi River. Through dogged perseverance she and another woman escape and “Follow the River” for nearly 1,000 miles back to her home.

Jumping forward 150 years, the book, “Esther’s Pillow” by Marlin Fitzwater, details the real-life story of a young Kansas woman in 1911. Margaret Chambers, fresh out of a teacher’s college, goes back to her hometown to teach in the school she had attended as a child.

The residences—particularly the women and a minister--of this sleepy little Kansas community, just to the north and west of Salina, react negatively to this college-educated, free-spirited woman. She has the audacity to brazenly shake men’s hands and she doesn’t attend church. Although she rebuffs the advances of some of the young men in the community, she becomes the victim of malicious gossip about her and one of her young male students.

With the approval of many of women in the town, a group of men, flushed by jealousy and fueled by whiskey, decides to drive her out of town. Margaret is lured into the countryside, where she is accosted by the men wearing feed sacks over their heads. Her clothes are ripped off and she is daubed with tar and feathers. Her cowardly attackers tell her to leave town.

Incensed by the violation of her rights, she goes to the sheriff’s office and brings charges against her attackers—including the son of an influential local minister. Her charges are brought to the attention of a reporter on the Kansas City Star.

In the nationally publicized trial that ensues, Margaret Chambers faces her attackers and the true instigators --the women of the town and a fire-brand religion gone amuck. When all is settled, 14 men—including the minister’s son-- are found guilty and sentenced to prison.

The author, Marline Fitzwater, was a former White House press secretary under the George H.W. Bush administration. He draws on national news accounts, historical society annals and official court records of the trial to craft this gripping story about a strong woman who confronts her tormentors.

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