 Shame
the Devil is a novel based on the life and works of nineteenth-century
American novelist, journalist and feminist, Fanny Fern. The book covers
Fanny Fern’s life (1811-1872), but concentrates on the 1850s and 1860s when
her literary career became established and her personal life was a
rollercoaster of highs and lows. Fanny Fern was the most popular, highest
paid, most published writer of her era. She outsold Harriet Beecher Stowe,
won the respect of Nathaniel Hawthorne and served as literary mentor to Walt
Whitman. She scrabbled in the depths of poverty before her meteoric rise to
fame and fortune. She was widowed, escaped an abusive second marriage,
penned one of the country’s first pre-nuptial agreements, married a third
man eleven years her junior, and served as a 19th-century “Oprah” to her
hundreds of thousands of fans. Fanny Fern’s weekly editorials in the pages
of The New York Ledger over a period of about twenty years help to chronicle
the myriad of controversial issues of her era while her novels, and the
critical response to them, both in her day and through subsequent eras, make
clear how America’s literary tradition began to and continues to define
itself. This novel strives for historical accuracy, not only regarding Fanny
Fern and the events of her life, but in regard to other historical figures
of her time including Walt Whitman, Catharine Beecher, Harriet Beecher
Stowe, Harriet Jacobs, Charles Dickens, Nathaniel Hawthorne, N.P. Willis and
James Parton.
READ AN EXCERPT FROM SHAME THE DEVIL*
READ DEBRA'S INTERVIEWS & MEDIA MENTIONS
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