Patricia Bernstein is delighted to discuss her novel A Noble Cunning: The Countess and the Tower and the non-fiction books The First Waco Horror and Ten Dollars to Hate, either virtually or in person.

Patricia Bernstein is delighted to discuss her novel A Noble Cunning: The Countess and the Tower and the non-fiction books The First Waco Horror and Ten Dollars to Hate, either virtually or in person.
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A Noble Cunning resulted from her visit to Scotland in 2014 when she first heard the story of persecuted Catholic noblewoman Winifred Maxwell, Countess of Nithsdale, who, in 1716, rescued her husband from the Tower of London the night before his scheduled execution. Winifred’s only helpers were her devoted women friends.
Patricia sees Winifred as an unsung feminist hero who accomplished a feat never equaled before or after, against the dark background of the Jacobite Rebellions and the vicious persecution of Catholics. She would be delighted to explain the period and the life of Winifred in more detail or answer any questions.
Patricia’s non-fiction books feature tragic events in Texas and US history—the horrific lynching of Jesse Washington in Waco in 1916, and the rise of the Ku Klux Klan of the 1920s, described as the most successful extremist rightwing movement in the history of the United States. In everything Patricia writes, she spotlights the heroes of the time who fought evil against great odds.
In The First Waco Horror, it is the founders of the NAACP and the young women’s suffrage activist who was asked by the NAACP to go to Waco and investigate the lynching. In Ten Dollars to Hate, it is the 29-year old Central Texas district attorney who took on, not only individual klansmen, but the Klan itself in a series of trials in Georgetown, Texas. She is happy to discuss either of these books and can link the troubles of the 1910s and 1920s to other periods of social upheaval in American history, including the events of our own time.