Review: The Price of Freedom
Rating: 4 out of 5
Date: 06 17, 2012
Ride for Rights, by Tara Chevrestt, tells the remarkable story of two young sisters  who ride motorbikes across the U.S. from Buffalo New York to Los Angeles California in 1916 to make two points: 1) That women are capable of riding motorbikes and can serve in place of men, (who are needed to fight in combat.) in the capacity of courriers, and 2) that women should be granted the right to vote. The book is fictional but based on the true story of the Van Buren sisters, Augusta and Adeline, who actually undertook such a venture.Ms. Cheverestt's heroines, Angeline and Adelaide Hanson encounter both romance and intense hardships along the way. At one point they are arrested and put in jail by a fanatical sheriff. They also experience their fair share of mechanical failures and breakdowns. They experience both support and intense opposition. At one point they are pelted with tomatoes by local youths. At various points along their journey they are helped by kind citizens. After Adelaide is injured in a collision with a deer, she is attended by a retired female physician in Wyoming, the only female doctor west of the Rockies.The heroines of this book, like their real-life counterparts are at the cutting edge of progressive thinking in their era. They struggle for rights that, in our own era, we Americans have long since taken for granted. (But are by no means univeral even today, if you look at societies such as Saudi Arabia, Afghanistan and Iran.)I recommend this book as a reminder that our rights as women were not granted without a struggle and that those brave women who fought for them should be remembered and honored. Even today there are those who would seek to deprive women of basic rights and we must remain vigilant.