Product Description
by Diana Dempsey (Author)
Winner, Midwest Fiction, National Indie Excellence Awards
Finalist, Historical Fiction, National Indie Excellence Awards
Longlisted, Best Indie Book 2023, Shelf Unbound
Honorable Mention, Historical Fiction, The Eric Hoffer Book Award
Silver Medal, Plains Fiction, Independent Publisher Book Awards
"Beautifully written, compulsively readable... " So says Indie Reader of The Unstoppable Eliza Haycraft - the riveting novel about a legendary woman in antebellum Missouri who allowed neither men nor society's conventions to keep her from cutting her own remarkable path.
The year is 1844. On a May midnight, Eliza Haycraft flings herself into a canoe to escape a husband who beats her and a life that does the same. She is penniless and illiterate. Yet a decade later, sex and secrets will make her the wealthiest woman in St. Louis, a frontier boom town at the western edge of a restless nation.
With only herself to rely on, Eliza becomes a prostitute and madam, then a property owner and puller of strings. She tangles with a vindictive rival and a governor who will become a Civil War turncoat. Scarred by experience, she finds true love but dares not admit it even to herself.
And when civil war looms, Eliza faces a devastating choice: whether to risk her own life for the survival of everything-and everyone-she holds dear.
Inspired by a true story, set in a tumultuous era too like our own, The Unstoppable Eliza Haycraft is historical fiction at its sweeping best: with richly drawn characters, a shattering love story, and an extraordinary heroine you will remember long after the last page is turned...
