It took voices big and small to win women the right to vote. Join the rallying cry of the women's suffrage movement in this empowering historical fiction novel from the author of The Hope Chest ! Bridie's life has been a series of wrongs. The potato famine in Ireland. Being sent to the poorhouse when her mother's new job in America didn't turn out the way they'd hoped. Becoming an orphan. And then there's the latest wrong—having to work for a family so abusive that Bridie is afraid she won't survive. So she runs away to Seneca Falls, New York, which in 1848 is a bustling town full of possibility. There, she makes friends with Rose, a girl with her own list of wrongs, but with big dreams, too. Rose helps Bridie get a job with the strangest lady she's ever met, Mrs. Elizabeth Cady Stanton. Mrs. Stanton is planning a convention to talk about the rights of women. For Bridie and Rose, it's a new idea, that women and girls could have a voice. But they sure are sick of all the wrongs. Maybe it's time to fight for their rights! "A strong example of historical fiction that could be utilized in U.S. history lessons." -- School Library Journal "A friendly introduction to the women’s rights and abolitionist movements of the nineteenth century." -- Booklist "Historical fiction fans drawn to period details . . . will be pleased." -- The Bulletin "Steeped in historical facts and details, which will particularly fascinate history buffs." -- Kirkus Reviews KAREN SCHWABACH grew up in upstate New York and lived for many years in Alaska, where she taught ESL in the Yup'ik village of Chefornak. She later taught in the education department at Salem College in North Carolina. She's the author of A Pickpocket's Tale, The Hope Chest, The Storm Before Atlanta, and Starting from Seneca Falls. 1 Taken On Trial The cell was five feet by nine feet and stifling hot. It contained a bucket, a pile of dirty straw, and Bridie. And it smelled of the bucket.  Up near the ceiling was a small, barred window. Bridie jumped up, managed to grab the bars, and walked herself up the wall. She had to turn her head sideways to peer out.  Through the small slit she could see the fields and the woods. And just a corner of the graveyard . . . she looked away quickly. She could see the other poorhouse children out in the cabbage field, weeding. A couple of the best-trusted boys were using hoes, but the rest of the children were down on their knees, pulling up weeds with work-roughened hands.  The children were nearly all younger than Bridie, who was eleven. Boys and girls her age were usually indentured soon after they came in. Especially if they came in with their parents. Parents who had ended up in the poorhouse were not considered suitable company for their own children.  But Bridie had been allowed to stay while her mother’s illness lasted. And now that that was over with . . . well, Bridie was trouble.  She asked questions. She pointed out the problems with things. She had opinions about the way things ought to be. She spoke when not spoken to.  And so here she was, locked up again on bread and water.  Beyond the fields she could see the woods, where the boys and men cut wood for the fires and for the poorhouse keeper, Mr. Fitch, to sell.  The poorhouse was out in the middle of nowhere, far from the bustling towns of the Finger Lakes. Because the poorhouse housed the people nobody wanted to have to see. Not just poor people, but folks who had turned out simpleminded, or been injured badly at work, or had just gotten too old to work, or had become a bit peculiar.  Bridie heard iron-tired wheels out on the road, and the clop of a horse’s hooves. She cricked her head around, trying to see if it was a buggy or a wagon. Then the sound of its wheels was drowned out by howling.  Old Mad Janet had gone off again.  Ha. They’d be sorry now that they’d locked Bridie up. She was just about the only person who could manage Mad Janet.  Then Bridie had another thought. There were only four cells in the poorhouse--only two for women and girls. If they locked Mad Janet up, they might have to let Bridie out.  They weren’t supposed to keep you in the cell on bread and water for more than two days; that was in the rules. But they did. Bridie thought she had been here for longer, boiling all day and freezing in the cold upstate New York summer nights. She had kept time by the gong that awakened the inmates at dawn, and the gongs that called them to their silent meals, and the gong that called them to Sunday prayers, and the gong that sent them to bed.  At least three days. Maybe four.  “Rubbish bums!” yelled Mad Janet. “Take the mouse war! They were old and fine and my people were kings, you know, kings! While yours were slippery dockets and all the whales!”  Bridie let go of the bars and dropped, her feet hitting the wooden floor with a thump.  Mad Janet kept going. “KIIIIINNNNGGGGSSS!”  CRASH! Something hit the wall--maybe a wooden bench. If Janet was thr