John Ward Preacher

With your help I could endure any pain. I wonder he went on in a lower voice as though thinking aloud if this strength of yours could inspire me to bear the worst pain there could be for me - I mean if I had to make you suffer in any way? Helen looked down at him surprised not quite understanding. Suppose he said - of course one can suppose anything - that for your best good I had to make you suffer: could I do you think? -from John Ward Preacher The fiction of 19th-century novelist Margaret Deland was greatly concerned with the particular challenges faced by the women in her era: the fight for suffrage the public disgrace of single motherhood and the secret shame of adultery. Her first novel 1888s John Ward Preacher is her most sensational a story of a Calvinist minister his freethinking wife Helen and their clash over religious doctrine-and in particular the concept of eternal damnation-that ultimately destroys them. A daring and original work about a woman asserting her intellectual independence this is a lost classic that will electrify readers of American feminist literature. American poet and novelist MARGARET DELAND (1857-1945) was a contributor to Harpers Magazine. She also wrote the novels Sidney (1890) Philip and His Wife (1894) and The Awakening of Helena Richie (1906) among others. Old Chester Tales (1898) is a collection of her short fiction.