The Hope Chest

A perfect Common Core tie-in, The Hope Chest includes back matter with period photographs, historical notes about the suffrage movement, and a Voting in America timeline. It's also a New York State curriculum title for fourth grade.



Eleven-year-old Violet has one goal in mind when she runs away from home: to find her sister, Chloe. Violet's parents say Chloe has turned into the wrong sort of person, but Violet knows better. The only problem is that Chloe's not in New York anymore. She's moved on to Tennessee, where she's fighting for women's right to vote. As Violet's journey grows longer, her single-minded pursuit of reuniting with her sister changes. Before long she is standing side-by-side with her new friends-suffragists, socialists, and colored people-the type of people whom her parents would not approve. But if Violet's becoming the wrong sort of person, why does it feel just right? This stirring depiction of the very end of the women's suffrage battle in America is sure to please readers who like their historical fiction fast-paced and action-packed. American Girls fans will fall hard for Violet and her less-than-proper friends.

Karen Schwabach grew up in upstate New York and lived for many years in Alaska, where she taught English as a Second Language in the Yup'ik (Inuit) village of Chefornak.

About Karen Schwabach