Johnstown, New York, 1823: It is a time when a wife’s dowry, even children, automatically becomes her husband’s property. Slavery is an economic advantage entrenched in America but rumblings of abolition abound.

For Elizabeth Cady to confront this culture is unheard of, yet that is exactly what she does. Before she can become a leader of the women’s rights movement and prominent abolitionist, she faces challenges fraught with disappointment. Her father admires her intellect but says a woman cannot aspire to the goals of men. Her sister’s husband becomes her champion-but secretly wants more. Religious fervor threatens to consume her.

As she faces depression and despair, she records these struggles and other dark confidences in diaries. When she learns the journals might fall into the wrong hands and discredit her, she panics and rips out pages of entries that might destroy her hard-fought reputation. Relieved, she believes they are lost to history forever.

But are they? Travel with Elizabeth into American history and discover a young woman truly ahead of her time.