A Gilded Age Tale of Two Ambitious Women

—And It’s All True!

Join author Greta Nettleton for a special Peterborough Presents discussion of her book "The Quack's Daughter: A True Story About the Private Life of a Victorian College Girl."

In 1884, a Vassar student with a scandalous background burst onto New York City’s social scene with high ambitions. The tale is based on the intimate Vassar diary kept by Greta Nettleton's great grandmother, a charming and spirited adventurer named Cora Keck. The tale transports you into America’s past as observed by a native. Cora’s powerful mother, Mrs. Dr. Rebecca Keck, pulled the strings in Cora’s life from her medical practice in Davenport, Iowa and paid for everything. Her controversial career as a self-made patent medicine millionaire began with female herbal home care before the Civil War and lasted profitably until she retired in the 1890s, at the dawn of modern medical science in the US. 

About the Presenter: 

Greta Nettleton is the author of The Quack's Daughter: A True Story About the Private Life of a Victorian College Girl published by the University of Iowa Press in 2014. She was a 2017 fellow at the Virginia Center for the Creative Arts and won the 2018 Book of the Year Award from the Rockland County (NY) Library System. She is currently at work on The Charmed Line, a novelized prequel about “the quack’s daughter’s mother”. Based on years of research on women in 19th century American medicine, it will make you question the myth that “there were no women doctors back then." 

About Peterborough Presents:

Peterborough Presents was designed to give a platform to the many local people who want to teach or share. You do not have to have a polished presentation, you just need to be passionate, comfortable speaking to a group, and have a presentation that the community will learn from and enjoy. To find out more about how to pitch your presentation, visit our Peterborough Presents page.

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