Excerpt from Stories from Suffragette City by M.J. Rose, Fiona Davis, plus links to reviews, author biography & more

This collection, written by some of the most celebrated authors writing today, commemorates and celebrates the battles women faced in fighting for the Nineteenth Amendment. The stories focus on women of different ages, different backgrounds, different ethnicities, as well as on the contributions made by men who supported the cause. These talented authors bring the powerful, important, emotional tales of the suffrage movement alive. In reading these stories as a collection, I was struck by the importance of the message. We are often reminded that those who forget the past are doomed to repeat it, and I believe deeply in the truth of that sentiment. Few things are as vital as remembering and passing on history to future generations.

History is not a set of dry facts in a dusty old book. We keep the past alive by remembering the people who lived it, who fought for a more equal world and who paid for their convictions. This short story collection celebrates the women who fought for our voices to be heard. By voting, we join the ghosts of the women who came before us in the fight to make the world a better place for our children and grandchildren.

Apple Season

LISA WINGATE

It is, at least, apple season. That one thing might save them. Although whether it can is yet uncertain. The orchard Grandmother planted long ago on the mountain's craggy slopes has gone wild and spindly, without enough hands to tend it for three seasons now.

Still, the hardy little trees have done their part. As September slipped into October and New York's Berkshire foothills donned their scarves of fog, the ragged orchard came in heavy-laden. Branches bowed to the ground, sometimes split at the forks under the weight of the ripening fruit. The trees once again proved themselves to be the kind of scrappy, determined things able to survive on the rough-hewn hillsides high above the Hudson Valley, hidden away to themselves, never having much need of outsiders.

Except this season, there is need. Little else but need.

Outsiders won't come to the apples. That was what Ashmea had told herself weeks ago when the apples began bursting with color. Something's got to be done before the crop goes to waste.

She knew, without anyone telling her, that not one apple can be lost when apples are all you have to get by until …

Until …

Until always ended in a question she couldn't answer, and so she had tried not to ask it, even to herself, as she'd taken out the tattered baskets and prepared for the harvest.

The question had nibbled at her even before that, as summer waned and inched toward autumn, and there'd been no sign of her pa's usual homecoming. And so with no one else to take charge of the harvest, she'd done so herself. She'd prodded her stepma, Clarey, from the bed and dressed the seven-year-old twins who were neither Clarey's blood nor, in general, Clarey's concern. In Clarey's defense, she hadn't come to the mountain expecting or prepared to be a stepmother. She was only double the age of the seven-year-old twins, Dabine and Blue, and just three years past Ashmea's eleven.

Only fourteen, and already Clarey had birthed a baby that now lay buried out past the orchard, where Ash's mother rested under a marking stone that Ash and the twins had rolled there themselves. They'd selected a pretty one with flecks that glimmered russet in the sun like apple skins. Like Ma's hair. Her real ma, who'd fed the children, and stitched together clothes from scraps gathered or traded for, and had taught Ash, Dab, and Blue about the orchard … and had sent them there to hide anytime hiding was needed.

It'd been hard to say, when Clarey's baby was lost, whether Clarey would've done the same for her tiny daughter if it had survived. There'd been no way of knowing whether Clarey had mourned or thought ahead about how she'd slip the baby away to some safe place when Pa took to the bottle and the leaning board-and-batten house turned into a bad place.

Excerpted from Stories from Suffragette City by M.J. Rose and Fiona Davis. Copyright © 2020 by M.J. Rose and Fiona Davis. Excerpted by permission of Henry Holt and Company. All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.