Notes on Chapter 01

If you go further in the book and read about the work of The Minute Women, you then have to wonder what type of person would start such an organization.   My thinking was to get a talented and committed person, otherwise ordinary, who becomes totally extraordinary because of unanticipated life events.  The role played by the unanticipated passing of Caroline's father is to provide those extraordinary circumstances.  That is the main reason the story begins with that.  There is a secondary purpose as well, to give Caroline startup funds via her inheritance so that didn't provide an obstacle, at least not initially. 

I want to take a step back here and ask why couldn't an ordinary person under ordinary circumstances (admittedly during Covid nothing really has been ordinary) be taken as the one to initiate The Minute Women?  The answer, I hope this is obvious so I don't need to argue it at length, is that the odds initially of such a venture succeeding would be so low that no rational person would undertake such a venture. The story needed somebody who didn't care about the odds and was willing to see it through regardless of how difficult it might get.  

Of course, the person also had to be a woman, because the overturning of Roe was what set all this into motion.   

In the Preface, I talk a little about why I think the story is better told as fiction.  This is one big reason why I think that's true. If you were arguing this through a nonfiction essay, you might not get to first base before the entire game was over.  By writing this as fiction, there can be a starting point with additional progress made from there.