A review by smreyno
Douglass' Women by Jewell Parker Rhodes

4.0

I had Jewell Parker Rhodes as a creative writing professor during my time at ASU some years back (she's great!) so I've tried to work my way through all of her books. "Douglass' Women" is one I've come back to a few times and I always breeze through it. I find it very compelling, if tragic. I don't know how true to history the characters of Anna and Ottilie are, I assume both are largely creations of the author, and I find them dynamic and frustrating heroines, each in their own way. Frederick Douglass is a remote presence by design, which I think is about the only choice you could make when writing about a figure like that. It also underlines how emotionally remote he was toward the women in his life, which the historical record has a basis for. Great men are often not good men to those who love them.