STAR PEOPLE

Laurel Thatcher Ulrich, a Pulitzer Prize winning historian at Harvard University, was researching the silent, long-forgotten contributions of Puritan women when she famously coined the phrase "well-behaved women seldom make history." Although the quote has been used in many contexts since then, its original intention was to highlight the lack of study or documentation of quiet, everyday women throughout history. 

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It would've been easy for Katharine Fay Dewey to see the same fate; to fade away with the passage of time as an unmarried, 19th-century woman whose only novel went out of print after only one edition. But 113 years later, the stars aligned and brought her story to me. I connected not only with Dewey's quiet, unassuming dedication to creativity, but also with the girls of "Star People" and their clever, lively characters of imagination. Dewey's description of the intricacies of the night sky proved that throughout differences in science and technology, one thing remains the same: our innate desire to know what's out there. 

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That legacy, inscribed into the words of "Star People," was dormant for over a century... but no less powerful. When it reached me and touched my heart with its childlike sincerity, when talented historical journalist Don Benjamin took on the project of unearthing information on Dewey from an assemblage of vintage newspapers, and when the 2023 summer solstice welcomed the book back into the hands of readers, Katharine Fay Dewey's story was brought back to life to inspire a new generation. 

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So in the end, I suppose Ulrich was right. Quiet women don't make history. 

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We make the future.