Summer of the Suffragists

It's the summer of 1905 in Ocean Grove, NJ, and a church bell tolls midnight as Elsie Shaw and her injured mother stumble into the sleeping Methodist campground. Over 700 tents stretch in all directions. Exhausted by their flight from NYC and Elsie's alcoholic father, they're unable to find grandfather's tent. They fall onto a pile of pine needles and sleep until dawn. This is not the typical way Victorians arrived for their seaside vacations, but nothing about Elsie is typical. Enduring the social problems of this era (poverty, overcrowded tenements, poor sanitation, alcohol abuse, sweatshops) thirteen-year-old Elsie must grow up fast if she and her mother are to survive on their own. At the N.J. Woman's Suffrage Convention in O.G. and the famous Asbury Park Baby Parade, she hears the strong voices of the suffrage women fighting for the right to vote. Later, she hears the temperance women of the WCTU speak about abolishing the sale of alcohol. When disaster strikes her life, Elsie turns to these women of the progressive era for solace and direction.