SILVIA PETTEM: SEPARATE LIVES

SEPARATE LIVES:
THE STORY OF MARY RIPPON

Illustrated 280-page hardcover

NOW on Kindle at Amazon.com

ISBN 978-1-891274-03-1 $29.95

Published by The Book Lode, LLC

As a pioneer woman educator, Mary Rippon received wide acclaim for her teaching, but in order to keep her job, she hid her husband and child behind a curtain of secrecy. Now, for the first time, "Separate Lives: The Story of Mary Rippon" reveals the conflicts between this extraordinary woman's public and private lives.

"An engaging juxtaposition of late 1800s morality, replete with the clipped and proper vocabulary and cadence of the time, and millennial openness. Not leering or titillating, it nevertheless does what all good biography should: Teach the reader not just about one life, but about the context in which it was lived."
Clay Evans, Daily Camera Books Editor

"This first biography of the first woman professor and one of the most beloved and respected University of Colorado faculty is a shocker. Pettem finds romance that would make for a fiction best seller. A love child in academe, a mysterious child fathered by a student, seems incredible baggage for the university's first woman professor, a spinster whom university President Joseph Sewall praised for her 'exalted womanhood.' In these pages you will find an amazing woman who lived life to the fullest, shattering the mold in which nineteenth century men wrapped women. Beautifully written and carefully researched and told, this story is vivid and unforgettable."
Tom Noel, Professor of History, University of Colorado at Denver