Longfellow's 21st Century Lunch

By Dennis Miller

When I started my novel, One Woman’s Vengeance, it was to be a revenge novel with a strong female protagonist in the post-Civil War west, a time and a place where women were not even second-class citizens. They weren’t citizens at all.

During the seven years of developing the novel, I realized with dismay that in some major areas not that much has changed for women.

Nora Hawks watches her husband’s cold-blooded murder by a gang of hired thieves. She is brutally gang raped and left for dead. She survives, secretly returns and hires a retired bounty hunter to teach her how to track and kill. She is intent on getting rid of each member on her own terms.

During the course of the story, Nora enlists the help of a Hispanic madam of a whorehouse. During the writing and research, I realized that when a woman…