The Great Divorce
A Nineteenth-Century Mother's Extraordinary Fight Against Her Husband, the Shakers, and Her Times
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Narrated by:
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Suzanne Toren
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By:
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Ilyon Woo
About this listen
Ilyon Woo's The Great Divorce is the dramatic, richly textured story of one of 19th-century America's most infamous divorce cases, in which a young mother singlehandedly challenged her country's notions of women's rights, family, and marriage itself.
In 1814 Eunice Chapman came home to discover that her three children had been carried off by her estranged husband. He had taken them, she learned, to live among a celibate, religious people known as the Shakers. Defying all expectations, this famously petite and lovely woman mounted an epic campaign against her husband, the Shakers, and the law. In its confrontation of some of the nation's most fundamental debates - religious freedom, feminine virtue, the sanctity of marriage - her case struck a nerve with an uncertain new republic. And its culmination - in a stunning legislative decision and a terrifying mob attack - sent shockwaves through the Shaker community and the nation beyond.
With a novelist's eye and a historian's perspective, Woo delivers the first full account of Eunice Chapman's remarkable struggle. A moving story about the power of a mother's love, The Great Divorce is also a memorable portrait of a rousing challenge to the values of a young nation.
©2010 Ilyon Woo. Recorded by arrangement with Grove Atlantic, Inc. (P)2015 Audible Inc.Listeners also enjoyed...
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- By: Marilynne K. Roach
- Narrated by: Kate Reading
- Length: 17 hrs and 8 mins
- Unabridged
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Six Women of Salem is the first work to use the lives of a select number of representative women as a microcosm to illuminate the larger crisis of the Salem witch trials. By the end of the trials, beyond the 20 who were executed and the five who perished in prison, 207 individuals had been accused, 74 had been "afflicted", 32 had officially accused their fellow neighbors, and 255 ordinary people had been inexorably drawn into that ruinous and murderous vortex, and this doesn't include the religious, judicial, and governmental leaders.
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Robotic Reader
- By DangerousBlossom on 12-15-18
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Louisa
- The Extraordinary Life of Mrs. Adams
- By: Louisa Thomas
- Narrated by: Kirsten Potter
- Length: 15 hrs and 42 mins
- Unabridged
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Born in London to an American father and a British mother on the eve of the Revolutionary War, Louisa Catherine Johnson was raised in circumstances very different from the New England upbringing of future president John Quincy Adams, whose life had been dedicated to public service from the earliest age. And yet John Quincy fell in love with her almost despite himself. Their often tempestuous but deeply close marriage lasted half a century.
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Insightful
- By Jean on 05-18-16
By: Louisa Thomas
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They Were Christians
- The Inspiring Faith of Men and Women Who Changed the World
- By: Cristobal Krusen
- Narrated by: Paul Boehmer
- Length: 6 hrs and 7 mins
- Unabridged
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What do Abraham Lincoln, Fyodor Dostoyevsky, Louis Pasteur, Frederick Douglass, Florence Nightingale, and John D. Rockefeller, Sr., all have in common? They all changed the world - and they were all Christians. Now the little-known stories of faith behind 12 influential people of history are available in one inspiring volume. They Were Christians reveals the faith-filled motivations behind some of the most outstanding political, scientific, and humanitarian contributions of history.
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Great book
- By Amazon Customer on 12-10-18
By: Cristobal Krusen
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Ladies of Liberty
- The Women Who Shaped Our Nation
- By: Cokie Roberts
- Narrated by: Cokie Roberts
- Length: 9 hrs and 59 mins
- Abridged
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Roberts presents a colorful blend of biographical portraits and behind-the-scenes vignettes chronicling women's public roles and private responsibilities.
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Ladies of Liberty
- By Sesenta-tres on 05-08-08
By: Cokie Roberts
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Twilight at Monticello
- The Final Years of Thomas Jefferson
- By: Alan Pell Crawford
- Narrated by: James Boles
- Length: 11 hrs and 12 mins
- Unabridged
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Much has been written about Thomas Jefferson, with good reason: His life was a great American drama, one of the greatest, played out in compelling acts. He was the architect of our democracy, a visionary chief executive who expanded this nation's physical boundaries to unimagined lengths.
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After Leaving Office
- By Roy on 09-23-10
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Snow-Storm in August
- The Passions That Sparked Washington City's First Race Riot in the Violent Summer of 1835
- By: Jefferson Morley
- Narrated by: Peter Jay Fernandez
- Length: 9 hrs and 18 mins
- Unabridged
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Editor and investigative reporter Jefferson Morley has been widely published in national periodicals and is the author of the critically acclaimed nonfiction work Our Man in Mexico. An eye-opening look at Washington’s first race riot, Snow-Storm in August also offers revealing profiles of Arthur Bowen, the slave blamed for the riot, and “Star Spangled Banner” lyricist Francis Scott Key, a defender of slavery who sought capital punishment for Bowen.
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An interesting
- By BDHumbert on 08-27-18
By: Jefferson Morley
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American Crucifixion
- The Murder of Joseph Smith and the Fate of the Mormon Church
- By: Alex Beam
- Narrated by: Michael Prichard
- Length: 10 hrs and 13 mins
- Unabridged
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On June 27, 1844, a mob stormed the jail in the dusty frontier town of Carthage, Illinois. Clamorous and angry, they were hunting down a man they saw as a grave threat to their otherwise quiet lives: The founding prophet of Mormonism, Joseph Smith. They wanted blood. At thirty-nine years old, Smith had already lived an outsized life. In addition to starting the Church of Latter-Day Saints and creating his own "Golden Bible" - the Book of Mormon - he had worked as a water-dowser and treasure hunter.
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All religious histories are not created equal
- By Kendra on 07-01-14
By: Alex Beam
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Marmee and Louisa
- The Untold Story of Louisa May Alcott and Her Mother
- By: Eve LaPlante
- Narrated by: Karen White
- Length: 14 hrs and 34 mins
- Unabridged
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Biographers have consistently credited her father, Bronson Alcott, for Louisa May Alcott's professional success, assuming that this outspoken idealist was the source of her progressive thinking and remarkable independence. But in this riveting dual biography, Eve LaPlante explodes those myths, drawing on unknown and unexplored letters and journals to show that Louisa's "Marmee", Abigail May Alcott, was in fact the intellectual and emotional center of her daughter's world. It was Abigail who urged Louisa to write, who inspired many of her stories, and who gave her the support and courage she needed to pursue her path.
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Hardworking women and the man they supported
- By Chris on 04-26-13
By: Eve LaPlante
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A Delusion of Satan
- The Full Story of the Salem Witch Trials
- By: Frances Hill
- Narrated by: Wanda McCaddon
- Length: 9 hrs and 59 mins
- Unabridged
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During the bleak winter of 1692 in the rigid Puritan community of Salem Village, Massachusetts, a group of young girls began experiencing violent fits, allegedly tormented by Satan and the witches who worshipped him. From the girls' initial denouncing of an Indian slave, the accusations soon multiplied. In less than two years, 19 men and women were hanged, one was pressed to death, and over a hundred others were imprisoned and impoverished. This evenhanded and now-classic history illuminates the horrifying episode with visceral clarity.
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A new take on the Witch Trials
- By Jolene Correll on 02-17-15
By: Frances Hill
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American Scoundrel
- The Life of the Notorious Civil War General Dan Sickles
- By: Tom Kenneally
- Narrated by: Humphrey Bower
- Length: 13 hrs and 40 mins
- Unabridged
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On the last, cold Sunday of February 1859, Daniel Sickles shot his wife's lover in Washington's Lafayette Square, just across from the White House. This is the story of that killing and its repercussions. Thomas Keneally brilliantly recreates an extraordinary period, when women were punished for violating codes of society that did not bind men. And the caddish, good-looking Dan Sickles personifies the extremes of the era.
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Interesting Good Listen
- By Kindle Customer on 01-10-24
By: Tom Kenneally
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Patriotic Treason
- John Brown and the Soul of America
- By: Evan Carton
- Narrated by: Michael Prichard
- Length: 15 hrs and 30 mins
- Unabridged
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John Brown is a lightning rod of history. Yet he is poorly understood and most commonly described in stereotypes, as a madman, martyr, or enigma. Not until Patriotic Treason has a biography or history brought him so fully to life, in scintillating prose and moving detail, making his life and legacy - and the staggering sacrifices he made for his ideals - fascinatingly relevant to today's issues of social justice and to defining the line between activism and terrorism.
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A Jarring Reminder of Antebellum America
- By Ronald A. Nelson on 12-22-06
By: Evan Carton
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Amazing Grace
- William Wilberforce and the Heroic Campaign to End Slavery
- By: Eric Metaxas
- Narrated by: Johnny Heller
- Length: 10 hrs and 3 mins
- Unabridged
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Amazing Grace tells the story of the remarkable life of the British abolitionist William Wilberforce (1759-1833). This accessible biography chronicles Wilberforce's extraordinary role as a human rights activist, cultural reformer, and member of Parliament. At the center of this heroic life was a passionate 20-year fight to abolish the British slave trade, a battle Wilberforce won in 1807, as well as efforts to abolish slavery itself in the British colonies.
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A Marvelous Story Gloriously Told
- By Douglas on 02-24-13
By: Eric Metaxas
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Frontier Grit
- The Unlikely True Stories of Daring Pioneer Women
- By: Marianne Monson
- Narrated by: Caroline Shaffer
- Length: 5 hrs and 48 mins
- Unabridged
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Discover the stories of 12 women who heard the call to settle the West and who came from all points of the globe to begin their journeys. As a slave Clara watched helplessly as her husband and children were sold, only to be reunited with her youngest daughter as a free woman six decades later. As a young girl, Charlotte hid her gender to escape a life of poverty and became the greatest stagecoach driver who ever lived. As a Native American, Gertrude fought to give her people a voice and to educate leaders about the ways and importance of America's native people.
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only ok
- By Jane Orr on 06-14-21
By: Marianne Monson
What listeners say about The Great Divorce
Average customer ratingsReviews - Please select the tabs below to change the source of reviews.
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- John Cashman
- 05-19-20
Outstanding book
This was one of my favorite reads. Highly recommended. It is meticulously researched and thoughtfully presented. It would make a perfect book for a book club.
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- Diane Peresie
- 02-14-23
The he great divorce
Very interesting. My parents divorced in 1940 and my mothers experience was a mess and unfair by todays standards. Women have to fight for every right.
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- Anonymous User
- 06-16-23
Inspiring
This woman was very much ahead of her time! A master class in perseverance and persuasion. A really interesting story! I’m
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- My Profile Name
- 06-21-21
A classic
The Great Divorce is a classic - The reading voice grows on you quickly. I do highly recommend.
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1 person found this helpful
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- Amazon Customer
- 06-09-21
Well written
Is well written. I know it is historical, but the story almost made me think it was fiction.
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1 person found this helpful