The theme of Milwaukee writer and long-time activist for working women Ellen Bravo’s first published novel Again and Again is timely and timeless. In it she takes on the rights, privacy and past lives of perpetrators and victims of rape. Ellen will be at Boswell Book Company on Thursday, Sept. 3, at 7 p.m. to talk about and sign copies of Again and Again. Here is Boswell’s announcement of her presentation:
Celebrate the Release of Ellen Bravo’s First Novel at Boswell, Thursday, September 3, 7 pm.
Boswell is proud to welcome Ellen Bravo, longtime director of 9to5, and now executive director of Family Values @ Work, a network of state coalitions working for family-friendly policies. Her first novel is Again and Again, which Gloria Steinem praised, noting that “core concepts of commonsense and feminism come to vibrant and subtle life” in the story.
If sexual shenanigans disqualified candidates for Congress, the U.S. might not have a government. But what if the candidate was a pro-choice Republican supported by feminist groups with a secret history as a college rapist? Again and Again tells the story of Deborah Borenstein, as an established women’s rights leader in 2010 DC, and also as a college student thirty years earlier, whose roommate is the victim of a sex crime. The perpetrator is now that Senate candidate, which puts Deborah in a difficult position. Torn between her past and present, as the race goes on, Deborah finds herself tested as a wife, a mother, a feminist, and a friend.“None of that mattered to Carol. She cared only about what her friend wanted her to do. “No way am I reliving that,” the friend told her. End of story. No expose. The guy went on to win the Congressional seat.”
“As Carol was telling me this story, I couldn’t help but think, what it if were a lot more complicated? What if the woman wasn’t a school principal but an activist against sexual assault and exposing rapists was a big part of what her organization did? What if the candidate was a pro-choice Republican supported by feminist groups because they badly needed bipartisan support on women’s issues? What if the woman who’d been raped by this guy was the activist’s roommate in college and she’d actually walked in on the assault? What if the then budding activist had pushed her roommate to file a complaint and the process had gone really badly? And what if this woman’s husband today was a political consultant in need of a boost to his career, who’d just been assigned the campaign of the conservative Democratic opponent in this Senate race?”
“That’s how Again and Again became the story of Deborah Borenstein, a woman whose decision could determine control of the Senate, the course of a friendship and the fate of a marriage.” More on Bravo’s website.”