A Novel Series for Women's History Month and Beyond

 A novel series I highly recommend is one based on a set of real-life sisters and their amazing accomplishments. If you have not yet discovered Amy Stewart's Kopp sisters series, allow me to introduce you to it.  When you read the books, always take time to read the author's notes at the end about the historical figures featured in the novels and and where the fiction deviates from facts for dramatic effect or because there is no detailed record to work off for certain aspects. You can also learn about the characters' history on her site. 

Girl Waits with Gun is the first of the series. Set in 1914, it introduces Constance Kopp, as the main heroine who foils those who threaten the sisters' household that includes the irascible Normal and the somewhat flighty but very talented Fleurette.

Lady Cop Makes Trouble  continues their story, focusing on the trials and tribulations Constance faces as one of the few female deputies in the United States in 1915, and the only one in her NJ neighborhood.  

Miss Kopp's Midnight Confessions takes us into 1916 with Constance working through new challenges with her career as a deputy and dealing with Fleurette's desire to spread her own wings. Speaking of wings, Norma's interest in homing pigeons (a bit of fiction, the author admits) takes on increasing importance.

Miss Kopp Just Wont't Quit keeps the story going in 1916 with Constance's adventures and unrelenting pursuit of justice. Fleurette also won't give up on her dreams of being on the stage.

Kopp Sisters on the March*  takes place in 1917 and has World War I bring the sisters in contact with new characters and new situations as they get an opportunity to support the war effort and challenge the assumption of feminine limits in new ways.  Much of this novel centers around a real historical  character named of Beulah Binford, a notorious female in her day.

*Another historical novel I just finished reading relates to what the Kopp sisters series touches on -- the young American women who paid their own way to go to France and contribute to the war effort. I recommend Lauren Willig's Band of Sisters. Like Stewart does in the pages following the story, Willig  clarifies her sources and the inspiration for certain characters and events in the novel.

Set in 1918, Dear Miss Kopp is an epistolary novel, a deviation in format from the omniscient third-person narrative form used for the previous five novels, as well as the one that follows it. With one sister in Washington, another in France, and a third travelling around to entertain troops stationed at various camps in the United States, they keep in touch by letter. New characters are also introduced and contribute to the letter-writing or serve as the recipients of letters that Fleurette does not share with her sisters.

Beginning shortly after the war's end in 1919, Miss Kopp Investigates allows Fleurette to come into her own as an investigator. You see that she's really grown up in this book. The sisters also have to come together to help out their widowed sister-in-law and hit on a tremendous plan at the end that is actually based on what they did in real life.

I can't wait for the next installment in the series that should be out toward the end of the year -- if the author keeps up her pace. Each novel is engaging in terms of events, character development, and the insight into the ways in which women had to overcome obstacles to blaze new paths that defined the 20th Century.

Related: To Boldly Go Beyond Barriers

Telling a story through letters and posts

Don Quixote is the work that many identify as the first modern novel, a work distinct from epic romances or other high-brow treatments of fictions that were considered worthy of poetry rather than prose.  Of course, that was not an English work, but a Spanish one. The novel genre only arrived in England nearly 2 centuries later, and often the stories were told in the form of letters. 
  
Epistolary novels are set on the premise of the narrator, telling the story to a correspondent. Samuel Richardson opted for the epistolary form for both Pamela and Clarissa in the 1740s.  About a half a century later, Jane Austen used that form in Lady Susan.  Some decade or two afterwards, Mary Shelley framed the story of the archetypal mad scientist, Frankenstein, in her novel of the same name by having the story related by the sailor who picks him up on his sea voyage in letters to his sister. However, as the novel gener took off during the 1800s, most dropped the epistolary device, even if they were written in first-person. 

It hasn't disappeared altogether, though, modern treatments tend to mix the letters with narrative, often from different points of view, as in  The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society.  Some contemporary novels substitute emails for letters and sometimes also throw in texts or social media style updates in telling their stories. I wouldn't be surprised if there is a novel that is relayed solely through tweets, possibly grouped under hashtags rather than traditional chapter titles. 

But I wonder if anyone has attempted to tell a story through an online community bulletin board. I know that some reveal an awful lot about their lives through their posts -- about having children, having financial difficulties, attempts at getting a job, attempts at getting a loan, divorce, and calls for outright handouts.  That's all from one person's posts over the past 3 or 4 years. For writers of fiction, I thought that such an account could  form the central line of a narrative from which several key characters branch off. 

Related interest:
http://uncommoncontent.blogspot.com/2013/06/jane-austens-heroines-from-extroverted.html
http://uncommoncontent.blogspot.com/2014/02/poetry-difference-between-practice-and.html