From the Publisher
Terrible Virtue is captivating, powerful, headlong and inventive—just like its subject. A beautifully wrought, compulsively readable novel. Ellen Feldman can do anything.” — Stacy Schiff, author of The Witches: Salem, 1692
“[A] highly topical novelization of the life of Margaret Sanger…. We need her story now more than ever.” — Elle
“Feldman compellingly portrays the difficult choices confronting women living in a man’s world.... This immersive, moving, and thought-provoking book is worthy of the intense discussions it’s sure to spark.” — Booklist, starred review
“How does a minimally educated, working class woman redirect the moral compass of an entire generation? Feldman shows us how in her masterful novel, Terrible Virtue. Passionate, driven, the Margaret Sanger of Feldman’s imagination is every bit as complex as the world she was determined to enlighten.” — Mary Beth Keane, author of Fever: A Novel of Typhoid Mary
“A fascinating exploration of Margaret Sanger as a visionary tour de force who left a stream of public victories and private casualties in her wake. Birth control, sex, family, work, individual need, free love, the greater good—it’s all here, historically grounded but as relevant today as it was then.” — Elizabeth Graver, author of The End of the Point
“Compelling…. An excellent choice for book groups.” — Library Journal
“Margaret Sanger blazes to life in this riveting, powerful novel. Read Terrible Virtue once to learn about the woman whose work ultimately shaped Western culture, then read it again for Ellen Feldman’s masterful storytelling. Fascinating and unforgettable.” — Lynn Cullen, author of Twain's End
“Margaret Sanger was passionate about birth control, freedom, a surprising number of men and her daughter. Ellen Feldman lets us see all these sides of one of America’s most complicated heroines, a woman who knew too well the hard choice between work and family. An irresistible and utterly timely novel.” — Margot Livesey, author of The Flight of Gemma Hardy
“A powerful, haunting, deeply ambitious novel about love and war, impeccably executed, impossible to put down.” — Stacy Schiff, author of Cleopatra: A Life, on Next to Love
“A riveting drama...inspired and inspiring.... Ruby is a gem of a character, and belongs with the best of William Faulkner’s, or Alice Walker’s, women.” — San Francisco Chronicle on The Unwitting
“A compelling story…of mystery, political intrigue, and forgiveness. Much of the fun comes from the literary cameos (think: Mary McCarthy, Richard Wright and Robert Lowell), but it’s the novel’s haunting portrait of a marriage that make this Cold War novel so resonant for readers of any time period.” — Oprah's Book of the Week on The Unwitting
“Bold and original….the originality of voice and thought [is] evident on every page… part love story, part mystery and part political thriller I would heartily recommend.” — All Things Considered, NPR, on The Unwitting
“A lustrous evocation of a stormy period in our past; highly recommended for lovers of World War II fiction.” — Library Journal, starred review, on Next to Love
“An intimate look at how we can be dismantled and rebuilt by changing times.” — O, The Oprah Magazine on Next to Love
“An honest American experience of the aftermath of World War II rendered in sharp detail and full of pathos, Next to Love tells us what we hate to acknowledge-that personal battles don’t end with the armistice. There is the touch of Everywoman here.” — Susan Vreeland, author of Girl with a Pearl Earring, on Next to Love
“Powerful….Feldman gets her history right and....the fictional characters are rendered in artful service to the novel’s larger project” — Atlanta Journal Constitution on Scottsboro
“Spellbinding fiction.... Rich imagination, memorable characters and elegant but restrained prose.... brings an American disgrace to life with eloquence, intelligence and passion.” — Richmond Times Dispatch on Scottsboro
“A novel that is based on archival records, court records, and first-person accounts but that succeeds overwhelmingly as a work of imagination...distilled with great subtlety and wit, into a story worth retelling and remembering.” — Boston Globe on Scottsboro
Elizabeth Graver
A fascinating exploration of Margaret Sanger as a visionary tour de force who left a stream of public victories and private casualties in her wake. Birth control, sex, family, work, individual need, free love, the greater good—it’s all here, historically grounded but as relevant today as it was then.
Stacy Schiff
Terrible Virtue is captivating, powerful, headlong and inventive—just like its subject. A beautifully wrought, compulsively readable novel. Ellen Feldman can do anything.
starred review Booklist
Feldman compellingly portrays the difficult choices confronting women living in a man’s world.... This immersive, moving, and thought-provoking book is worthy of the intense discussions it’s sure to spark.
Elle
[A] highly topical novelization of the life of Margaret Sanger…. We need her story now more than ever.
Margot Livesey
Margaret Sanger was passionate about birth control, freedom, a surprising number of men and her daughter. Ellen Feldman lets us see all these sides of one of America’s most complicated heroines, a woman who knew too well the hard choice between work and family. An irresistible and utterly timely novel.
Mary Beth Keane
How does a minimally educated, working class woman redirect the moral compass of an entire generation? Feldman shows us how in her masterful novel, Terrible Virtue. Passionate, driven, the Margaret Sanger of Feldman’s imagination is every bit as complex as the world she was determined to enlighten.
San Francisco Chronicle on The Unwitting
A riveting drama...inspired and inspiring.... Ruby is a gem of a character, and belongs with the best of William Faulkner’s, or Alice Walker’s, women.
Lynn Cullen
Margaret Sanger blazes to life in this riveting, powerful novel. Read Terrible Virtue once to learn about the woman whose work ultimately shaped Western culture, then read it again for Ellen Feldman’s masterful storytelling. Fascinating and unforgettable.
Atlanta Journal Constitution on Scottsboro
Powerful….Feldman gets her history right and....the fictional characters are rendered in artful service to the novel’s larger project
Richmond Times Dispatch on Scottsboro
Spellbinding fiction.... Rich imagination, memorable characters and elegant but restrained prose.... brings an American disgrace to life with eloquence, intelligence and passion.
Susan Vreeland
An honest American experience of the aftermath of World War II rendered in sharp detail and full of pathos, Next to Love tells us what we hate to acknowledge-that personal battles don’t end with the armistice. There is the touch of Everywoman here.
Boston Globe on Scottsboro
A novel that is based on archival records, court records, and first-person accounts but that succeeds overwhelmingly as a work of imagination...distilled with great subtlety and wit, into a story worth retelling and remembering.
The Oprah Magazine on Next to Love O
An intimate look at how we can be dismantled and rebuilt by changing times.
Oprah's Book of the Week on The Unwitting
A compelling story…of mystery, political intrigue, and forgiveness. Much of the fun comes from the literary cameos (think: Mary McCarthy, Richard Wright and Robert Lowell), but it’s the novel’s haunting portrait of a marriage that make this Cold War novel so resonant for readers of any time period.
All Things Considered
Bold and original….the originality of voice and thought [is] evident on every page… part love story, part mystery and part political thriller I would heartily recommend.
Kirkus Reviews
2016-01-10
Margaret Sanger, the revolutionary fighter for women's contraceptive rights and founder of Planned Parenthood, joins the pantheon of figures whose lives have been turned into historical novels. Born into grinding poverty, Sanger observed, keenly, the toll that pregnancy after pregnancy took on her exhausted mother, who had 13 children. An escape from her childhood home and the opportunity for formal education, both provided by her devoted older sisters, exposed her to the possibilities of a life unfettered by destitution and despair. A devotion to political activism as well as the exploration of all sorts of personal freedoms became the hallmarks of Sanger's tumultuous life, which she narrates in a lively first-person voice, which Feldman occasionally intersperses with sections addressed to Sanger from her nearest and dearest, including children, lovers, and husbands. A spectacular tension between the demands of motherhood and the zeal with which she pursued all of her passions—political as well as sexual—forced Sanger to choose, on more than one occasion, between being present with her children or forging onward in her battle to provide access to birth control, and arguably better lives, for women in dire circumstances similar to those of her childhood. The choices Sanger made to further her crusade were not without cost, and Feldman deftly illuminates the terrible tolls (both inflicted and self-inflicted) they took upon her heroine in a narration that is elegiac as well as triumphant. Cameo appearances by the great names of Sanger's time add notes of gossipy interest for the historically aware reader while placing the events of the novel in a broader social context. Feldman's (The Unwitting, 2014, etc.) well-researched treatment of the often tragic realities of the life of a formative figure in American social history offers much to contemporary readers living through current culture wars.
