2005

I arrived on August 1, 2005 at the American Antiquarian Society on a Creative Artists and Writers Fellowship excited to learn more about the life of Mercy Otis Warren (1728-1815), the first female historian of the American Revolution. At that time very few books were devoted to Mrs. Warren but the month I spent at the AAS greatly enhanced my understanding of the historical background, social tensions and personalities that led her to become an influential playwright, poet and social critic of the Revolution and the early Federal period.

It is 1845, and Hannah Gardner Price has lived all twenty-four years of her life according to the principles of the Nantucket Quaker community in which she was raised, where simplicity and restraint are valued above all, and a woman’s path is expected to lead to marriage and motherhood. But up on the rooftop each night, Hannah pursues a very different—and elusive—goal: discovering a comet and thereby winning a gold medal awarded by the King of Denmark, something unheard of for a woman.