Book Review: "Susannah, a Lawyer" by Ruth Rymer

Susannah, a Lawyer: From Tragedy to Triumph
Ruth Rymer
ISBN: 978-1934938416
Langdon Street Press


It’s the 1870s and young Susannah Reed has a promising life ahead of her. She’s a recent graduate of Mt. Holyoke College and betrothed to a childhood friend who plans to become a lawyer. She comes from a good family, with a father who is a minister and rising figure in the Episcopal Church. Everything seems to be going her way, when tragedy strikes, and this is not like any other.

What happens to Susannah changes not only the course of her life, but its deeper purpose. When sent away from her New York home to live with her brother (another minister) and his wife in Chicago, she decides that she will grab out for her heart’s desire--to read (study) law--while she awaits her finance’s completion of study at Harvard University.

Along the way, Susannah learns just who she is as a woman, as a potential mate, and as a lawyer. There is opposition at every turn. Susannah is perceived an upstart, one of very few women even allowed into the legal profession to the consternation of her legal colleagues and potential husband. Even once she has entered the profession (fighting the odds for success), she must prove herself again and again. In the courtroom, at her law firm, among legal colleagues, and with the clients she represents, Susannah faces an uphill battle, and nearly doesn’t succeed.

Making her story more compelling is the historical background that author Ruth Rymer has used to tell the fictional account of one of the first women lawyers in the nation. She’s set the story in Chicago, a city riven by corruption yet progressive in letting women even take a seat in the legal profession. To make the story true to the times, Rymer has used real figures, including Abraham and Mary Todd Lincoln, as well as Myra Bradwell, a real personage who was the country’s first woman lawyer and publisher of “Chicago Legal News.” This mixture of fact and fiction, of “good families” and life in the stockyards of Chicago, leads readers unconsciously into the mindset of the times.

Where other historical fiction may draw up a harsh contrast with the present day, Rymer uses this historical milieu to create a situation in which readers find themselves drawn into the lives of her characters, with a sympathy for their circumstances. Susannah, a Lawyer: From Tragedy to Triumph is a fascinating look at the historical beginnings of women’s participation in the legal profession, as well as a pleasurable read. The historical detail never trumps the story, but instead intertwines perfectly to support this engaging tale.