I must have gotten this book in a bundle of chapbooks from a Friends of the Springfield-Greene County Library book sale before I bothered to enumerate the chapbooks in the bundles. So it’s been floating on my to-read stacks for some time, and that time apparently was this interim where my lower level is tented, I am perpetually agitated, and I cannot focus on reading longer books. So, as I have been the last week or so, I am focusing on the shorter books in my stacks. And I have plenty, although I have plentier thicker books, and reading thin books does not make room for me to tidy up the stacks.
So: This is a short (~45 pages) biography of Margaret Tobin Brown. Born in Hannibal, Missouri, she married a man who made a bundle in the Colorado oil boom, and although she really, really tried to break into high society in Denver, they rebuffed her. She kinda separated from the husband, traveled a bunch, survived the sinking of the Titanic, and by this grace of God became something of a cult hero, especially after A Night To Remember came out and especiallier after The Unsinkable Molly Brown came out. Afterwards, she was allowed into the society she craved although probably more as a pet than a member in good standing.
Oh, and she was called Maggie by those who knew her, not Molly; the author says there’s a class distinction, where high class women named Margaret get Molly, but I’m not convinced that’s true.
So: Interesting, and better than learning the story by sitting through a musical.
