Entering her bedroom, April threw herself across the bed. Flipping onto her back, she stared at the ceiling, cursing the Fates that had brought Gray Fuller to Dignity. It had been a nice, quiet town until he got here.

      Lydia Pinkham was helping women, and instead of working hand in hand to find solutions to problems, Gray and other doctors like him were doing everything they could to hinder her progress.

      Women needed Lydia Pinkham’s Vegetable Compound. Why, Henry had told her that a Connecticut preacher was actually murdered by his wife after she’d suffered for sixteen years with female complaints. That could have been averted if the poor woman had only had the elixir!

      Mrs. Pinkham wasn’t trying to lift Eve’s curse, she was only trying to ease a few miseries. April believed with all her heart that God wouldn’t object to those poor women getting help. He’d given the formula to Mrs. Pinkham, April was sure of it. And she, herself, had felt His calling. She wouldn’t be going behind Grandpa’s back if she didn’t believe that she was on a mission. Now, thanks to Gray Fuller, she had to choose between Grandpa or disobeying God. Life was so unfair.

      It was a crime the way doctors routinely removed healthy ovaries, as they had done to her mother. Far too many women were dying from the process.

      Rolling over, April buried her face in the pillow, recalling how her mother had died an untimely, unnecessary death.

      Delane Truitt had been in the prime of her life when she was beset by female problems. A heavy menstrual flow put her to bed two out of four weeks a month. She’d gotten to the point where she couldn’t appear in public for fear an “accident” would leave her red-faced with shame. In desperation, she’d finally consented to let the doctor remove her ovaries and uterus. The procedure had taken her life.

      April was glad her father had not been around to witness the tragedy. He had died three years before Delane’s death in a train derailment as he was returning from New York. “Dignity doesn’t have anything good enough for my wife and daughter,” he’d say, so off he’d go every December in search of the perfect gifts.

      That December, he never came back.

      April was obsessed by the thought that Mrs. Pinkham’s compound might, just might, have saved her mother’s life.

      That hope was what fired her crusade.

      If she could spare one woman her mother’s fate, then her cause was justified, no matter what Grandpa thought.

      Lydia Pinkham, far from being the quack Dr. Fuller called her, was truly a pioneer. She hadn’t come by her trade easily. She’d been one of twelve children, her father a cordwainer and farmer. Twice married, he’d been a Quaker, but left the Friends because of a conflict over the slavery issue.

      Lydia had graduated from Lynn Academy, then served as secretary of the Freeman’s Institute. She was a schoolteacher when she married Isaac Pinkham, who had a daughter by a previous marriage. Their union produced five more children—Charles, Dan, Will, Aroline, and a baby who died.

      Lydia confided that Isaac was a dreamer. Though he’d tried various real estate promotions and other business ventures, nothing had worked out. That’s when the money problems began.

      Unable to stand idly by and watch everything they had be taken from them, Lydia had decided to market her elixir. She chose botanical bases for the compound because she had so little faith in orthodox practitioners. She considered their medical treatment to be far too harsh.

      And over and over again her skepticism proved to be sound.

      Rolling onto her back once more, April stared at the ceiling, blinking back hot tears.

      Grandpa had forbidden her to sell the compound. All because of Dr. Fuller.