Lemons In The Garden of Love

• Author has hired Marissa DeCuir of Books Forward (a JKS Communications Company) for national, trade, and local media relations. • Advanced readers copies mailed to trade review publications, newspapers, magazines, and women’s websites, including Publishers Weekly, Kirkus Reviews, Booklist, Library Journal, Historical Novel Reviews, and more. • Author will make use of the new documentary Borderland: The Life and Times of Blanche Ames to help publicize the novel, which was inspired by this remarkable woman. • The Planned Parenthood League of Massachusetts has offered to host a joint publicity event. • Author will do readings and make presentations in the Twin Cities and Boston areas, and will participate in book festivals there and in other locations.

When graduate student Cassie Lyman discovers that she’s related to the woman she’s decided to write her doctoral dissertation about—Kate Easton, the founder of the Birth Control League of Massachusetts—her quest to discover the truth about Kate unearths some unpleasant family secrets.It’s 1977 and Cassie Lyman, a graduate student in women’s history, is struggling to find a topic for her doctoral dissertation. When she discovers a trove of drawings, suffrage cartoons, letters, and diaries at Smith College belonging to Kate Easton, founder of the Birth Control League of Massachusetts in 1916, she believes she has located her subject.

Digging deeper into Kate’s life, Cassie learns that she and Kate are related—closely. Driven to understand why her family has never spoken of Kate, Cassie travels to Cape Ann to attend her sister’s shotgun wedding, where she questions her female relatives about Kate—only to find herself soon afterward in the same challenging situation Kate faced.