This post is part of a virtual book tour organized by Goddess Fish Promotions. David McCracken will be awarding a $10 Amazon or Barnes and Noble GC to a randomly drawn winner via rafflecopter during the tour. Click on the tour banner to see the other stops on the tour.

Woman suffrage—wasn’t that just about women in long skirts getting the vote years ago? Didn’t the 19th Amendment settle that in 1920? No, the “Prices of the Vote” in my subtitle alludes to that ongoing struggle. The first price was to exclude non-white women from the discussion, and it is still being paid, even by Native Americans. The fact that a major political party in the United States is actively working to curtail voting, especially by non-whites and, yes, women, indicates the struggle is not won. As my novelette makes plain, by the 20th century, the resistance to woman suffrage was intimately bound up in resistance to black woman and black man suffrage. And look where the resistance is focused now. It is even using the filibuster that was the center of the South’s resistance to civil rights. Now the “party of Lincoln” is leading the repression, though it previously led the civil rights fight.

The struggle for woman suffrage was one of the great dramas of our time. Imagine, throughout most of the world, half the human race, men, held the other half, women, in bondage. Yes, even white women were chattel, limited in their right to education, occupation, and property, even in their rights to their children. I choke up, still, when I read my account of the conclusive fight in the Tennessee House. I hope that by humanizing the struggle through a fictitious heroine with her hopes and feelings, the drama will come through for you and thus bring the necessary historical background alive. It is more current than we (men) would like to think. I am gratified that many reviewers have felt it.

I will continue the story in coming volumes. I hope to have the next one, Far Beyond Woman Suffrage: Testing the Limits, ready by 2/2/22. You can see how I’m coming on that through my website for all my books, DoFancifulFlights.com. In addition, I’m working on a couple of other books to fill out the promise of that title. Stay tuned in.

And VOTE!

Far Beyond Woman Suffrage: The Prices of the Vote

It isn’t just about women in long skirts finally voting. The racists and the rich know that, and the politicians worry.

Mercy Martin has an inside view as the battle for woman suffrage nears a climax, but she encounters many puzzles:

• So many women and Southern states oppose votes for women;
• So many people are afraid it would bring on free love, abandonment of family, economic catastrophe, or communism.
• So many suffragists are willing to abandon black women voters.

From an innocent teen to a young adult, Mercy has a central role in the campaign. She advances from confinement in a suffragist jail cell to the national campaign for the suffrage amendment. She campaigns around Tennessee, ending at the capitol for the explosive climax in the last state that might ratify the amendment and grant the vote to women.

Why should something so clearly right be so hard, and why were some bitter compromises made? Mercy is right in the middle, relied on by key players. Along the way, she acquires a husband, a baby, and better parents than she was born with.

This is an intimate view via alternative historical fiction, as accurate as it can be and as thoughtful and moving as it must be. In this first novella of a series, Mercy jumps into the campaign for woman suffrage and prepares for a vital role in the coming decades. She’ll continue on into the wider civil rights struggle growing out of woman suffrage.

Enjoy an Excerpt

Progress? 1/12/1918

I excitedly wait before my shift on the line to discuss with Miss Sue news I heard about, that the House approved the woman suffrage amendment 274 to 136 two days ago! “So, we’re almost there?” I ask her when she’s passing by, checking how we pickets she’d assigned for the day are doing.

Her mouth tightens: “Sweety, we’ve just begun. That’s just over the required 2/3, and I understand the Senate will refuse even to debate it until October. “

“How can that be? Don’t they know it’s right … and important?”

“They’re afraid of the heat they’ll get from both sides and probably can’t line up the votes to pass it. In Southern states, a vote for woman suffrage is political suicide because negro women there would be able to combine their votes with Northern liberals.”

I look down: “Then it’s hopeless?”

“No, an election is coming. If they postpone a vote until after the election, we might win the few more seats we need.”

“Oh.”

“Don’t worry. We’re not letting any of them off the hook, especially not Woodrow Wilson. It’s his Democratic party, his responsibility. No excuses. He’s got to produce the votes.”

About the Author David McCracken became a political activist when the Supreme Court ruled against school segregation. Fellow students joined him in urging the school board in Winchester, KY, to integrate immediately. He campaigned for a Democratic governor and joined the ACLU before he graduated from the University of Kentucky. After debating at U.K., he got a degree in economics and a job with the U.S. Department of Commerce.

When his daughters approached school age, he became increasingly concerned with how he wanted them schooled. Researching that, he decided teaching was what he really wanted to do. He got a master’s degree in elementary education at Murray State University. He taught for several years, until the fact that his girls qualified for reduced-price lunches based on his salary got to him. Ronald Reagan’s anti-government policies prevented him from returning to government work, so he took programming courses and shifted careers again. Programming was like being paid to solve puzzles all day, but teaching eventually drew him back until retirement.

For many years of this time, he was working intermittently at a novel that became Fly Twice Backward: Fresh Starts in Times of Troubles. This concerned his waking on his twelfth birthday, trying to figure out what had happened, following his new opportunities, and ultimately outliving an evil president resembling Donald Trump. After thirty-six years, David finally published it as an interactive alt-history Kindle novel. He soon started, Far Beyond Woman Suffrage: The Prices of the Vote, an alt-history novelette dealing with the campaign for woman suffrage. He finished this piece in just ten months. At 81, he is bold(?) enough to plan this as the first of a six-volume set dealing with the far-reaching results and implications of woman suffrage. His completed novels and another in the works are presented for discussion on a new website, DoFancifulFlights.com

David now lives with his third wife, stepdaughter, and step-grandson near Winchester, VA. He has a son from his second marriage, six grandchildren, and two stepchildren. And a wonderful black dog with four white feet.

Buy the book for only $0.99 at Amazon.

a Rafflecopter giveaway

This post is part of a virtual book tour organized by Goddess Fish Promotions. David McCracken will be awarding a $25 Amazon/BN GC to a randomly drawn winner via rafflecopter during the tour. Click on the tour banner to see the other stops on the tour.

NOTE: The book is on sale for only $0.99 (or read for free on Kindle Unlimited) at Amazon!

A diverse and intriguing worldwide cast of characters is outlined, their descriptions raising questions only hinted at, one an ally who develops essential psychic powers, and “familiar-looking corrupt politicians, religious leaders, and corporate czars,” as well as “an ancient force in the background, promoting greed, violence, hate, and fear.”

Reading the Look Inside, I’d see the account is rich in the details of the family and the time, and a lure of other exotic characters. I’d also see the main character has human problems of trying to figure out whether this is real, what happened, and how to convince his family of it.

Would I read it? With a click of the Buy Now button, I’d have it downloaded and ready to be read eagerly!

You wake back in early adolescence, adult memories intact, including ones that could make you very wealthy now. Your birth family is here, alive again, but your later families are gone, perhaps forever. What has happened, what should you do about coming problems like violence, ignorance, pollution, and global warming? You realize one key connects most, the fundamentalist strains of all the major religions, disdaining science, equality, and social welfare. You see that there are some things you can change, some you can’t, and one you don’t dare to.

Fellow idealists help you spend your growing fortune well–such as an artistic Zoroastrian prince in the Iranian oil industry, a rising officer in the Soviet army working to find a way to destroy his corrupt government, a Bahai woman struggling against Islamic brutality, a Peruvian leader working for a liberal future, and a snake-handling Christian minister, grappling with doubts, sexuality, and destiny. They are supported by an ally who develops essential psychic powers. The group faces familiar-looking corrupt politicians, religious leaders, and corporate czars, but there is an ancient force in the background, promoting greed, violence, hate, and fear.

This exciting, emotional, thoughtful, humorous, and even romantic sci-fi novel weaves progressivism, music, movies, and literature into a struggle spanning the globe. Vivid characters propel the action back up through an alternative history toward an uncertain destination. Experience the unique story and its novel telling.

Enjoy an Excerpt

Waiting for breakfast, reading the Sunday paper at the table, I realize Mom’s not heading for the kitchen: Oh, oh! It’s church day. Mass. Fasting. Acolyting! What’m I going to do about that?

“Mom, am I supposed to serve today?”

“Of course!”

“Well, I can’t. I have no idea how to do that anymore. I guess we need to call Padre and tell him I’m sick.”

“No, David, we’re not playing that game today!”

“Mom, I hate to say this now, but I have no choice. I don’t know how to serve, so I can’t do it, and, frankly, I’m not ever going to do it. I’m an agnostic, a Unitarian, actually.”

She’s slamming the pots I washed and put in the drainer last night as she puts them into the cabinet under the counter. “That’s ridiculous. You don’t know enough to be an agnostic.”

Fortunately, Dad has come in and heard this exchange.

“Nev, whether his story is true or not, or he knows enough or not, he has a right not to go. He was old enough to be confirmed, so he’s old enough to choose. I’ll serve in his place.”

“Lie about being sick, on Sunday?”

“Mom, it’s a temporizer. I can’t reveal to him why I’m not going to today, much less why I’ll never again do it, and I know you wouldn’t want me to be open about it. I might not even be here next Sunday.” I chuckle. “Maybe I’ll have fallen back to age four, with Dad off in the Navy!” What a sharp look I get!

“We need a few days to sort this out, Nev.”

About the Author: David McCracken was born in Louisville, KY, in 1940. Raised mostly in Winchester, KY, he now lives in Northern Virginia, with his third and final wife. He has three children, two stepchildren, and six grandchildren.

After three years in the U.S. Navy following a lackluster academic start, he graduated from the University of Kentucky in 1963, in Diplomacy and International Commerce. He then worked as a Latin American country desk officer in the U.S. Department of Commerce until he returned to school to earn an M.A. in Elementary Education in 1970 from Murray State University, having always been intending to teach. Eventually realizing his children qualified for reduced-price lunches based on his own teaching salary, he studied computer programming at Northern Virginia Community College and worked as a programmer until shifting back into elementary teaching.

He began working on what became Fly Twice Backward in 1983 and finally finished it in 2019! At 79, David strongly doubts he’ll be doing another novel of such scope and complexity, but is preparing to work on a children’s science fiction novel with a progressive bent, being a devout progressive in politics and religion, as well as a lover of learning.

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