i would have liked a little more historical detail from this - they speak of a box of letters and while i'm sure it's a small box, i would have wanted to read more than just the few lines we were given from these letters. was freda playing with alice? was alice reasonable to think freda loved her, or did she allow her feelings to carry away her ability to see the truth? was alice just one of the many suitors that freda strung along? why was alice so assured that freda would marry her? what do some of those letters say? was it even more clear, through those letters, that alice was an abuser, or is that more in retrospect? (not that, i should mention, coe really discusses this. i'm not sure she romanticizes their relationship, but she doesn't quite paint alice as an abuser by today's standards, either. for example, it seems clear to me that if alice and freda had managed to run away to st louis and start a new life together (with alice as alvin) that eventually alice would have been driven to kill freda out of some imagined - or real! - slight or fit of jealousy. it seems like framing alice more as an abuser should have happened.) but this book was less about the actual relationship between alice and freda, and more about how society couldn't even fathom it. they didn't know what to do or how to talk about it, in a time when they were trying hard, it seemed, not to openly talk of much of anything.

that was maybe my biggest takeaway from this. that they couldn't talk about anything in public; even in the courtroom they had to talk around the idea of sexual activity. that at the time, someone had tried to regulate flirting on public transportation, and someone else to make flirting in general a misdemeanor! so they were wholly unable to talk about the relationship between alice and freda.

i was actually a little surprised by this, because we know that historically, same sex couples have been in all of history. we know they've been in america, so it seemed a bit far reaching to me for people to really consider alice legally insane - and therefore not responsible for murder - simply because she wanted to marry freda. but this book is history, so while i'd have a problem with it in fiction, i guess i can just be surprised here. because the entire defense of alice hinged on the fact that no one could think her sane for loving and wanting to be with a woman. her tomboyish tendencies were part of the defense, even. and it worked, so even knowing that other couples existed, i guess this just shows how general society would view them and what they may have been experiencing at the time. juxtaposed as well, with some other things going on at the same time - the lynchings and segregation, and ida b wells coming to prominence. i would have liked more on other things in society, since this was more about society and less about alice and freda (although as i mentioned, i'd like more of their relationship as well.) as a history, this is really quite something.

"Alice's insistence that she killed Freda because she loved her and could not stand the idea of anyone else having her, and that the young women had planned to marry, seemed nothing short of insane."

"The idea that Alice might imagine a life with Freda in childless terms was so foreign to the doctors that, in their estimation, it could only mean she lacked basic adult understanding of how sexual reproduction worked."

"In the 1890s, the United States was cementing its national identity, and it was predicated upon maintaining the white home on a national level. Same-sex love and African American men and women were cogent threats to the rigid hierarchy of race and gender, and the reactions on a local level from the judge, jail, sheriff, and newspapers speak to the national construction of American modernity." ( )

Alice Mitchell and Freda Ward were middle class young women, who fell in love when at the same girl's school. 1n 1892, Alice killed Freda, by cutting her throat with a knife; in jealousy since Freda was pulling away from the relationship. The interesting thing was that lesbianism was so foreign to people's understanding at that time, that the public had a really hard time understanding the event. Alice ended up being found not-guilty because of insanity. (the only evidence of insanity really being that had same-sex romantic feelings). She died in an insane asylum in 1898.

I am not a true crime reader, so was unsure about this book, but it was well done and a good read, with a couple of (major) issues.

Coe did not discuss this event within the framework of intimate partner violence. This was a huge miss. Alice framed the event as a love story, and Coe doesn't really question this. Of course, at that time and place, there was not an understanding of domestic violence, and there are lots of example of men killing women out of jealousy, and that being viewed romantically. (Look at [The Ballad of Reading Gaol]). However, I think if we are looking at this today. we can't miss that piece. ( )

This is a thoughtful and empathetic look at a murder trial around the turn of the century. I learned a lot of queer history from this book: for instance it was apparently normal and accepted for white, upper class girls in the Victorian era to maintain intense, same-sex romantic relationships while in school (called "chumming"). Also, apparently at least one prominent medical doctor thought women became lesbians because of "excessive use of sewing machines". ( )

In 1892, the U.S. was shocked by a crime of passion: Alice Mitchell murdered her lover in cold blood, in front of witnesses, and confessed to her crime. As if that weren't shocking enough, the love was Frederica Ward, a woman.

This true crime novel is borderline whether it's written for teens or adults, and as a result is more surface-y than I would have liked. The author-as-narrator seems to have a sort of wide-eyed "this was shocking 100 years ago and wouldn't be now" attitude instead of grounding the case in the history and legal situation of the day. She does, a little, but it's so oversimplified that I was left confused on more than one occasion. While it sheds light on a little-known story in American history, I think it could have been better. ( )