Defending Alice
eBook - ePub

Defending Alice

A Novel of Love and Race in the Roaring Twenties

  1. 576 pages
  2. English
  3. ePUB (mobile friendly)
  4. Available on iOS & Android
eBook - ePub

Defending Alice

A Novel of Love and Race in the Roaring Twenties

About this book

“Gripping courtroom drama and social commentary . . . the story flows well . . . [the author is] masterful in building suspense.”—Kirkus Reviews

Set in 1920s New York, an addictively readable, thoroughly entertaining historical novel involving sex and secrets, race and redemption, and power and privilege—based on a sensational real-life case that made international headlines—in which the marriage between a working-class black woman and the scion of one of America’s most powerful white families ends in a scandalous annulment lawsuit.

When Alice Jones, a blue-color woman with at least one Black parent marries Leonard “Kip” Rhinelander, the son of one of New York’s most prominent society families, the scandal rocks high society—and eventually sets the city afire when Kip later sues for an annulment, accusing Alice of having hidden her “Negro blood” and intentionally deceiving him that she was white.

While New York society in the Roaring Twenties witnessed more than a few scandals, the real-life Rhinelander case set tongues wagging and became perhaps the most examined interracial relationship in American history. In Defending Alice, Richard Stratton reimagines this remarkable story, from the couple’s courtship through their controversial marriage to their shocking divorce trial and its aftermath. Chronicled by Alice’s attorney, brilliant trial lawyer Lee Parsons Davis, and told in flashbacks and entries from Alice and Kip’s fictional personal diaries, this epic page-turner vividly brings to life the New York of a century ago—a world seemingly far removed yet tragically familiar to our own.

Stratton brilliantly evokes this dazzling era in all its glamour and excess, and in retelling the Rhinelander story, explores issues of sex, race, class, prejudice, and justice that are as relevant today as they were a century ago when this headline-making trial took place.

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Yes, you can access Defending Alice by Richard Stratton in PDF and/or ePUB format, as well as other popular books in Literature & American Drama. We have over one million books available in our catalogue for you to explore.

Information

Publisher
HarperVia
Year
2022
Print ISBN
9780063115460
eBook ISBN
9780063115477

Table of contents

  1. Epigraphs
  2. Contents
  3. Part One: Colorblind
  4. Chapter One: For the Defense
  5. Chapter Two: Sunday, September 18, 1921
  6. Chapter Three: Defending Alice
  7. Chapter Four: Courting Alice
  8. Chapter Five: Knowing Alice
  9. Chapter Six: A Time Apart
  10. Chapter Seven: A Time Together
  11. Part Two: Blue Blood
  12. Chapter Eight: Flight
  13. Chapter Nine: November 24, 1924
  14. Chapter Ten: The Plaintiff
  15. Chapter Eleven: The Reluctant Knickerbocker
  16. Chapter Twelve: November 27, 1924
  17. Chapter Thirteen: Twelve White Men Good and True
  18. Chapter Fourteen: The Plaintiff’s Evidence
  19. Chapter Fifteen: December 1, 1924
  20. Chapter Sixteen: Defending Alice
  21. Chapter Seventeen: A Bombshell
  22. Chapter Eighteen: Yes, She’s Colored
  23. Chapter Nineteen: Meeting Alice
  24. Chapter Twenty: December 10, 1924
  25. Chapter Twenty-One: Knowing Alice
  26. Chapter Twenty-Two: My Nitwit
  27. Chapter Twenty-Three: Blackface
  28. Chapter Twenty-Four: Wreck the Boy!
  29. Chapter Twenty-Five: Sunday, December 14, 1924
  30. Chapter Twenty-Six: Patricide
  31. Part Three: Dusky Skin
  32. Chapter Twenty-Seven: A Kiss upon Lips That Never Smile
  33. Chapter Twenty-Eight: Striptease
  34. Chapter Twenty-Nine: The Defense Rests
  35. Chapter Thirty: The Vamp and the Dupe
  36. Chapter Thirty-One: Tuesday, December 23, 1924
  37. Chapter Thirty-Two: The Verdict
  38. Chapter Thirty-Three: Under a Gibbous Moon
  39. Acknowledgments
  40. About the Author
  41. Copyright
  42. About the Publisher