A Woman Named Defiance: Selected Works by Mary Faith Floyd with her Novel Eagle Bend

Nearly 150 years ago a woman named Mary Faith Floyd wrote a story that spans Savannah GA New York Blount County TN--and the area of town in Clinton TN known as Eagle Bend. It was published in serial form in a newspaper and then ...Lost. Until now. Mary Faith Floyds writing style is lavish but very readable. The writing brings to mind novels by Anthony Trollope and even Thomas Hardy in its description of the natural world and human interactions.- Crystal Huskey the Clinton Courier-News May 2019Its not just any story and she was not just any woman-and yes her middle name was Defiance. Floyd a twice-married woman was writing in Milledgeville GA and Knoxville TN--using her maiden name--about equal pay for women in 1873 and about child abuse in 1885. Her daughter Laura McAdoo Gagey became a noted Parisian solonierre who helped Anatole France write The Gods Will Have Blood while her son William Gibbs McAdoo Jr. became U.S. Treasury Secretary and ran for president in 1920 and 1924. Her husband William Gibbs McAdoo was a professor at the University of Tennessee.Storyhaus Medias Douglas McDaniel searched for Floyds lost novel for 14 years before finding it on microfilm at the University of Georgia Library in Athens in January 2019. It was last published as a serial in the Savannah Morning News in 1883. A Woman Named Defiance is an anthology of some of Mary Faith Floyds poetry essays short stories and her second book Eagle Bend a fiction novel that celebrates the raw nobility of 19th century life in southern Appalachia the culture and norms of Savannah society and the hopes and aspirations of Floyds protagonist Minona Dearing a young woman seeking to become a published author in Savannah New York and Boston just after the Reconstruction period.