Inspired by America’s 250th anniversary as a nation, I rounded up some historical fiction about real women who shaped America’s history. As a girl, I loved series like American Girl Dolls, Dear America, and the Little House books and was curious what I could find in adult fiction.
I found some great novels featuring the true stories of America’s diverse Founding Mothers, pioneers, homemakers, soldiers, businesswomen, activists, socialites, actresses, artists, scientists, politicians, spies, athletes, and everyday women who made history for doing what was right.
There are some great lists already out there for historical fiction about women, but I didn’t find any that offered a book (about a real woman) for each period of American history. I thought this would be a great way to march through our timeline, through perspectives we may not have seen before.
- Early Colonial Period
- The Revolution
- Westward Expansion
- The Civil War
- The Gilded Age
- The 20th Century
- World War I
- The Roaring 20’s
- The Great Depression
- World War II
- The Cold War, Space Race, and Civil Rights
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Early Colonial Period – 1607-1738
Mary’s Land by Lucia St. Clair Robson
As the ship Charity sails from England across the Atlantic, two vastly different yet equally courageous women make the perilous journey.
Strong-willed, upper class Margaret Brent has invested in Lord Baltimore’s Maryland plantation because the new colony is her single chance for a home of her own. Anicah is a teenage guttersnipe who lives by her wits and quick tongue. Kidnapped off the streets of Bristol, she is transported to the New World as an indentured servant. But for both women, the future will bring love and rewards they never imagined. . . .
An independent landowner, Margaret was the first woman in the English colonies to formally request the right to vote.
The Indigo Girl by Natasha Boyd
The year is 1739. Eliza Lucas is sixteen years old when her father leaves her in charge of their family’s three plantations in rural South Carolina and then proceeds to bleed the estates dry.
Upon hearing how much the French pay for indigo dye, Eliza believes it’s the key to their salvation. Eliza finds that her only allies are an aging horticulturalist, an older and married gentleman lawyer, and a slave with whom she strikes a dangerous deal: teach her the intricate thousand-year-old secret process of making indigo dye and in return—against the laws of the day—she will teach the slaves to read.
Based on historical documents, including Eliza’s letters, this is the account of how a teenage girl laid the foundation for the incredible wealth of several Southern families. When she passed away in 1793, President George Washington served as a pallbearer at her funeral.
The First Great Awakening
Hang a Thousand Trees with Ribbons: The Story of Phillis Wheatley by Ann Rinaldi
Kidnapped from her home in Senegal and sold as a slave in 1761, a young girl is purchased by the wealthy Wheatley family in Boston. Phillis Wheatley—as she comes to be known—has an eager mind and it leads her on an unusual path for a slave—she becomes America’s first published black poet.
She was greatly influenced by the words of George Whitefield and used his arguments about the fairness of God to argue against slavery.
Declaration of Independence and the Revolutionary War (1762-1784)
A Founding Mother by Stephanie Dray & Laura Kamoie
In the heart of revolutionary Boston, Abigail Adams raises her children amid riots, blockades, and the outbreak of war. While her husband, John Adams, rises from country lawyer to nation-builder, often away for years at a time, Abigail builds her own independence—managing their farm, making lucrative investments, amassing savings, battling plague and loss, and defending their home.
She famously offers fearless political counsel, urging John to “remember the ladies” in the new government. When peace is secured, Abigail steps onto the world stage, presiding over the parlor politics of the early American republic.
Even after her husband’s presidential administration, she continues battling political foes and working behind the scenes to ensure a better life for the next generation of Americans.
A Girl Called Samson by Amy Harmon
In 1760, Deborah Samson is born to Puritan parents in Plympton, Massachusetts. When her father abandons the family, Deborah is bound out as an indentured servant.
Twenty years later, as the American colonies begin to buckle in their battle for independence, Deborah, disguises herself as a soldier and enlists in the Continental army. Her impressive height and lanky build make her transformation a convincing one, and it isn’t long before she finds herself confronting the horrors of war.
But as Deborah fights for her country’s freedom, she must contend with the secret of who she is—and, ultimately, a surprising love she can’t deny.
Here’s a great list with more “Historical Fiction About Women of the American Revolution.”
Westward Expansion (1801-1890)
Deliverance Mary Fields, First African American Woman Star Route Mail Carrier in the United States by Miantae Metcalf McConnell
1885 – 1914. Mary Fields, a fifty-three-year-old emancipated second-generation slave receives news of her friend’s impending death. She rushes to the Montana wilderness to find Mother Mary Amadeus lying in a frozen, broken-down cabin. Certain that the cloister of frostbit nuns and their students, Indian girls rescued from nearby reservations, will not survive without assistance, Mary decides to stay.
Mary drives a horse and wagon through perilous terrain and sub-zero blizzards to improve the lives of missionaries, homesteaders and Indians. But she doesn’t stop there. An avid patriot, she is determined to register for the vote, despite the high price.
Miss Etta – A Novel by Deanna Lynn Sletten
She rode with the most famous outlaws of her time. Then she vanished.
In the fall of 1895, Etta Place falls in love with Harry Longabaugh, alias the Sundance Kid. She gives up everything to follow him and his partner-in-crime, Butch Cassidy, in their outlaw life across the continent and beyond. Every inch a lady, Etta can also ride and shoot as well as any man.
But soon, she finds herself alone and living in a convent with her newborn son. Etta moves halfway across the country to begin anew, praying her past won’t catch up with her.
Crow Mary by Kathleen Grissom
In 1872, sixteen-year-old Goes First, a Crow Native woman, marries Abe Farwell, a white fur trader.
When a group of drunken whiskey traders slaughters forty Nakota and takes five Nakota women back to their fort, she begs Farwell to save them. When he refuses, Mary takes two guns, creeps into the fort, and saves the women from certain death.
Thus, she sets off a whirlwind of colliding cultures that pushes the love between Farwell and Crow Mary to the breaking point.
The Civil War, Emancipation, and Reconstruction (1861-1877)
Daughter of a Daughter of a Queen by Sarah Bird
Though born into bondage on a “miserable tobacco farm” in Little Dixie, Missouri, Cathy Williams never forgot her noble warrior blood. Her chance at freedom arrives with Union general Sheridan, who takes the rawboned, prideful young woman into service.
At war’s end, Cathy refuses to return to servitude and disguises herself as a man and join the Army’s legendary Buffalo Soldiers.
Alone now in the ultimate man’s world, Cathy vows to never give up on finding her mother, her little sister, and the love of the only man strong enough to win her heart.
The Tubman Command: A Novel by Elizabeth Cobbs
In South Carolina, Harriet Tubman plots an expedition behind enemy lines to liberate hundreds of bondsmen and recruit them as soldiers for the struggling Union army. A bounty on her head, she has given up husband and home for the noblest cause.
General David Hunter places her in charge of a team of black scouts even though skeptical of what one woman can accomplish. For her gamble to succeed, “Moses” must outwit alligators, overseers, slave catchers, sharpshooters, and even hostile Union soldiers to lead gunships up the Combahee River.
Industrialization and the Gilded Age (1876–1900)
The Social Graces by Renée Rosen
1876. In the glittering world of Manhattan’s upper crust, women are valued by their pedigree, dowry, and, most importantly, connections. And none is more powerful than Caroline Astor—the Mrs. Astor.
Alva Vanderbilt has recently married into one of America’s richest families. But what good is dizzying wealth when society refuses to acknowledge you? Alva, who knows what it is to have nothing, will do whatever it takes to have everything.
Sweeping three decades and based on true events, this is the mesmerizing story of one of the most remarkable feuds in history.
The Black Rose: The Dramatic Story of Madam C.J. Walker, America’s First Black Female Millionaire
by Tananarive Due
Born to former slaves on a Louisiana plantation, Madam C.J. Walker rose from poverty and indignity to become America’s first black female millionaire, the head of a hugely successful beauty company, and a leading philanthropist in African American causes.
Renowned author Alex Haley became fascinated by the story of this extraordinary heroine, and before his death in 1992, researched and outlined a major novel based on her life. Now, critically acclaimed writer Tananarive Due brings Haley’s work to an inspiring completion.
A Right Worthy Woman by Ruth P. Watson
Based on the inspiring true story of Virginia’s Black Wall Street and the indomitable Maggie Lena Walker, the daughter of a formerly enslaved woman who became the first Black woman to establish and preside over a bank in the United States.
Maggie’s childhood in 19th-century Virginia, helping her mother with her laundry service, opened her eyes to the overwhelming discrepancy between the Black residents and her mother’s affluent white clients.
Maggie buckled down and went from schoolteacher to secretary-treasurer of the Independent Order of St. Luke, founder of a newspaper, a bank, and a department store where Black customers were treated with respect. She revolutionized Richmond in ways that are still felt today.
The 20th Century
Women’s Rights (1878-1920)
The Women’s March: A Novel of the 1913 Woman Suffrage Procession by Jennifer Chiaverini
To inspire support for a constitutional amendment, 25-year-old Alice Paul organizes a magnificent procession down Pennsylvania Avenue.
Joining the march is thirty-nine-year-old Maud Malone, who has acquired a criminal record for interrupting politicians’ speeches with pointed questions they’d rather ignore.
Civil rights activist and journalist Ida B. Wells-Barnett resolves that women of color must also be included in the march—and the proposed amendment.
But negligent police allow vast crowds of belligerent men to harass the parade, endangering not only the success of the demonstration but the women’s very lives.
Gum Moon: A Novel of San Francisco Chinatown by Jeffrey L Staley
Based upon events in the life of the author’s wife’s grandmother, Gum Moon (Cantonese for “Golden Gate”) is the story of a Chinese-American girl, Mei Chun Lai, who is sold in 1898 at the age of three to a cruel brothel keeper. She is rescued and placed in a Home for abused and trafficked girls, only for it to be destroyed in the 1906 San Francisco earthquake and fire.
Chun survives, and in an attempt to raise funds to rebuild the Home, she and a group of seven other Chinese children embark on a cross-country singing tour. Performing for President Theodore Roosevelt is the highlight of the journey, but when the matron of the Home suffers a breakdown, thirteen year-old Chun must find the strength and resolve to lead the children home.
Here’s a list of more novels about women’s suffrage.
World War I (1914-1918)
Switchboard Soldiers by Jennifer Chiaverini
In WWI, more than 7,600 women responded to the call for telephone operators, including Grace Banker of New Jersey, Marie Miossec, a Frenchwoman and aspiring opera singer, and Valerie DeSmedt, a twenty-year-old Pacific Telephone operator from Los Angeles.
They were among the first women sworn into the U.S. Army under the Articles of War. The male soldiers they replaced had needed one minute to connect each call. The switchboard soldiers could do it in ten seconds.
Deployed throughout France, including near the front lines, the operators endured hardships and risked death or injury from gunfire, bombardments, and the Spanish Flu. Not all of them would survive.
The President’s Wife by Tracey Enerson Wood
Independent socialite Edith Bolling has been in no hurry to find a new husband since she was widowed. But Woodrow Wilson wins Edith over and she becomes the First Lady of the United States.
Edith is soon indispensable to her husband’s presidency. When WWI hits, she encrypts top- secret messages and becomes an important policy adviser. But during critical peace talks, Woodrow’s delicate health takes a dramatic turn for the worse. In her determination to preserve both his progress and his reputation, Edith all but assumes the presidency herself.
Now, Edith must contend with the weight of a nation, her secrets, and the potentially devastating consequences of her failure.
Here’s another list highlighting novels about America’s Most Influential First Ladies.
The Roaring Twenties
The Brightest Star: A Historical Novel Based on the True Story of Anna May Wong by Gail Tsukiyama
America is falling in love with silent movies, including young Wong Liu Tsong. Choosing the stage name Anna May Wong, she leaves high school at sixteen, defying her traditional father’s wishes.
After a series of nothing parts, nineteen-year-old Anna May gets her big break starring opposite Douglas Fairbanks in The Thief of Bagdad. Yet she is still relegated to supporting roles as a helpless, exotic butterfly or a vicious, murderous dragon lady, while Caucasian actresses in “yellowface” are given starring roles portraying Asian women.
Though she suffers professionally and personally, Anna May fights to win lead roles, financially support her family, and keep her illicit love affairs hidden—even as she finds freedom and glittering stardom across the globe.
Georgia: A Novel of Georgia O’Keeffe by Dawn Tripp
In 1916, Georgia O’Keeffe is a young, unknown art teacher when she travels to New York to meet Stieglitz, the famed photographer and art dealer, who has discovered O’Keeffe’s work and exhibits it in his gallery.
O’Keeffe is quickly drawn into Stieglitz’s sophisticated world, becoming his mistress, protégé, and muse. Their attraction deepens and his photographs of her, both clothed and nude, create a sensation.
Yet as her own creative force develops, Georgia begins to push back against what critics and others are saying about her and her art and choose a life she believes in.
The Great Depression (1929-1939)
Becoming Madam Secretary by Stephanie Dray
Frances Perkins arrives in New York City at the turn of the century, armed with an unyielding determination to make a difference.
But when she meets a young lawyer named Franklin Delano Roosevelt at a tea dance, sparks fly in all the wrong directions. Frances thinks he’s a rich, arrogant dilettante. He thinks she’s a priggish, insufferable do-gooder. Neither knows it yet, but they will form a historic partnership that will carry them both to the White House.
Frances is destined to face down the Great Depression as FDR’s most trusted lieutenant—even as she struggles to balance the demands of a public career with marriage and motherhood. Can she overcome vicious political attacks and personal tragedies to save a nation?
Learning to See by Elise Hooper
In 1918, a fearless twenty-two-year old arrives in bohemian San Francisco, renaming herself Dorothea Lange. She soon becomes the owner of the city’s most prestigious portrait studio and wife of the talented but volatile painter, Maynard Dixon.
By the early 1930s, as the America’s economy collapses, her marriage founders and Dorothea must find ways to support her two young sons single-handedly. Determined to expose the horrific conditions of the nation’s poor, she takes to the road with her camera, creating images that inspire, reform, and define the era.
And when the United States enters World War II, Dorothea chooses to confront another injustice—the incarceration of thousands of innocent Japanese Americans.
World War II (1939-1945)
The Only Woman in the Room: A Historical Novel of Hedy Lamarr and Her Secret Wartime Invention by Marie Benedict
Her beauty saved her from the rising Nazi party and led to marriage with an Austrian arms dealer. Underestimated, she overheard the Third Reich’s plans while at her husband’s side and understood more than anyone would guess. She devised a plan to flee in disguise from their castle, landing her in Hollywood. She became Hedy Lamarr, screen star.
But she kept a secret more shocking than her heritage or her marriage: she was a scientist. And she had an idea that might help the country fight the Nazis and revolutionize modern communication… if anyone would listen to her.
Note: Almost all of Marie Benedict’s books fall under the category of “real American women who made history (and were often overlooked).”
Ace, Marvel, Spy: A Novel of Alice Marble by Jenni L Walsh
At seventeen, Alice Marble has no formal tennis skills and no coach, but rises to be one of the top-ranked players in the world. But with the outbreak of war with Germany, Alice loses everything, including her career.
Then, the US Army sends her a request: Under the guise of playing tennis in Switzerland, she would be a spy for them. Alice aches for nothing more than to avenge what the war has taken from her. But what awaits her might be her greatest challenge yet.
The Cold War (1947-1991), the Space Race (1955-1975), and the Civil Rights Movement (1954-1968)
Jackie by Dawn Tripp
When Jackie meets the charismatic congressman Jack Kennedy in Georgetown, she is twenty-one and dreaming of France. She has won an internship at Vogue. Kennedy, she thinks, is not her kind of adventure: “Too American. Too good-looking. Too boy.”
Yet she is drawn to his mind, his humor, his drive. The chemistry between them ignites. During the White House years, the love between two independent people deepens. Then a love affair, a complicated marriage, and the fracturing of identity that comes in the wake of unthinkable violence.
Harlem Rhapsody by Victoria Christopher Murray
In 1919, a high school teacher from Washington, D.C arrives in Harlem to realize her lifelong dream. Jessie Redmon Fauset has been named the first black woman literary editor of The Crisis magazine.
But she has a secret – W. E. B. Du Bois, the founder of The Crisis, is not only Jessie’s boss, but her lover. Despite the rumors, Jessie is determined to prove herself. Under Jessie’s leadership, The Crisis thrives… every African American writer in the country wants their work published there.
When her first novel is released to great acclaim, it’s clear that Jessie is at the heart of a renaissance. She has shaped a generation of literary legends, but will discover a high cost of her unparalleled success.
The Woman with the Cure by Lynn Cullen
In 1940s and ’50s America, polio is as dreaded as the atomic bomb. No one’s life is untouched by this disease that kills or paralyzes its victims, particularly children. The man who finds the cure will be a god.
But Dorothy Horstmann is not focused on beating her colleagues to the vaccine. She just wants the world to have a cure. She hunts down the monster where it lurks: in the blood.
This discovery of hers, and an error by a competitor, catapults her closest colleague to a lead in the race. When his chance to win comes on a worldwide scale, she is asked to sink or validate his vaccine—and to decide what is forgivable in pursuit of the cure.
I tried really hard to find more novels from the late 20th century about real American women. But the closer we get to present day, the rarer novelizations of real figures are, since many of these figures have recently told their stories in their own words.
That’s actually one of the coolest things I learned from researching and compiling this list – many of the most famous women in American history (and plenty of lesser known ones) have written their own books: biographies, journals, letters, poetry, and more! I much prefer fiction, but I might have to go check out the original words of America’s founding women. Schools really have no excuse for not teaching more about how women shaped America’s history – there is SO much source material.
Back to late 20th c. historical fiction – books like The Women of Arlington Hall, American Spy, and The Women are popular books set in the Cold War and Vietnam War eras, but all the main characters are fictional amalgamations of real people, so I did not include them. Similarly, books like Hidden Figures and The Rise of the Rocket Girls tell the story of women in the Space Program, but they are nonfiction, and I’m not sure how much of a narrative they carry.
So personally, I’d rather try to find memoirs from the women who actually lived through these events rather than read nonfiction overviews or purely fictionalized accounts – but that would make for an entirely different list. Again, to my irritation, most lists are extremely unspecific. There are tons of blog posts about “influential women of history,” but they are a random compilation of women from all over the world, at any time period. As if there aren’t enough great women to make a list like “Memoirs by the Most Influential American Women of the 20th Century.”
It was frustrating to me to discover that despite the great leaps in recognition for women, this list was still way too hard to compile. It seems like there is very little middle ground between “romance chick-lit inspired by history” and “intricately researched, dry biography.” I delved deeply into the reviews for the above books trying to find that sweet spot, deliberately leaving out some of the “better known” book-club picks if they fell too far to one side of the spectrum.
I hope this list helps you find some great reads that let you “walk through America’s history” through the eyes of inspirational women, and if you know of more, please share them in the comments below!
Everyone was getting into the “reading bingo card” fad, so I thought I’d make one up for my top picks from this list.
Hi, I’m Caylah Coffeen, a freelance editor and marketer of sci-fi and fantasy books. I love reading and writing and am a follower of Jesus Christ.
I’ve worked for Monster Ivy Publishing, Eschler Editing, and Havok Magazine. Reach out to chat about books and publishing!
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