A wonderful book, beautifully written!
--Barnes & Noble review
"A generational tale deftly written with penetrating insight, personality, and feeling,
Burning of the Marriage Hat is very highly recommended reading and
would make an exceptional selection choice for women's reading groups."
--The Midwest Book Review
"Burning of the Marriage Hat is a powerful book that uses the medium of fiction to explore serious social issues."
Cynthia Parkhill, Lake County Record-Bee
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Fiction / Social Issues /
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"Down in the south just north of Cheyenne, there's wind as usual
banging at windows, shaking doors, wearing away the psyches of housewives whose lives are governed by how
strong the breezes that blow across Wyoming."
--excerpt from Burning of the Marriage Hat, ( ©Copyright by
Margaret Benshoof-Holler)
Q: What is a marriage hat?
A: Literally, it means something like the marriage veil. In another way, it is something more symbolic.
In life we find ourselves wearing different hats for different occasions. American women wore many
different hats during the 20th century -- the "housewife hat", the "wife and mother hat," the "working woman" hat,
"the liberated woman hat," "the marriage hat" and so on.
Q: What does the title Burning of the Marriage Hat mean?
A:Literally, it's the hat that the narrator's grandmother is forced by her
husband to burn after all love and romance has died in their marriage.
"Naomi grabbed the hat, walked over to the stove,
opened up the grate, and threw it into the fire. The feathers fizzled as the fire caught hold. The
flames lashed out singeing the hair on her arm. She stared a moment as the fire consumed her last
remembrance of love and romance in her marriage."
--excerpt from Burning of the Marriage Hat, ( ©Copyright by
Margaret Benshoof-Holler)
Q: Is Burning of the Marriage Hat: A Novel of High Plains Women just a book about
high plains women?
A: This is a story about a modern-day woman, a world-traveled
woman who returns to her roots to resolve conflicting family accounts about her grandmother's death.
This is also a book about the lives of girls and women across the 20th century
in Wyoming and these are seen through the narrator's flashbacks through time. The setting is Wyoming because that's were
the author came of age and where her roots are. Since leaving Wyoming over 30 years
ago, the author has lived throughout the world and now lives in San Francisco. She has a broad perspective honed not just
from one geographical area but from many different places. The author's Wyoming roots, though, are what give the story
flavor and a different perspective.
Wyoming's motto is the "Equality State" because that's where women first gained the right to vote and sit on juries in
the United States. Wyoming is also called the "Cowboy State." The "Equality State" and the "Cowboy State"--two
contrasting themes played out in the characters of this book.
Radio Interviews
Author Margaret Benshoof-Holler has been featured on:
- KALW 97.1 FM, San Francisco, CA, author Margaret Benshoof-Holler interviewed by Paul Linde on "Health, Mind
and Body."
- Author Margaret Benshoof-Holler Interviewed by KGO AM 810's Ed Baxter on the Morning News in San Francisco
- Author Margaret Benshoof-Holler interviewed by Emily Elfenbein, WBEB 101-FM, Philadelphia, PA "The Women's File."
Women's File Interview
- Author Margaret Benshoof-Holler interviewed by Don Riggs, KMPS-94.1 FM morning news, Seattle, WA.
- Author Margaret Benshoof-Holler interviewed by Susan Franzblau
for "Women's Voices Women's Lives" on NPR affiliate WFSS, 91.9 FM
Fayetville, North Carolina with a focus on Burning of the Marriage Hat and conditions of unwed
pregnant women.
- KPFA 94.1 FM, Berkeley, CA, author Margaret Benshoof-Holler interviewed by Denny Smithson on "Cover to Cover."
- Author Margaret Benshoof-Holler interviewed on the
Lorie & Julia Show, FM 107 WFMP Radio,
St. Paul, Minnesota.
- KZYX 91.5 FM Mendocino, CA, author Margaret Benshoof-Holler interviewed by Janie Rezner on "Women's
Voices"
TV
- Author Margaret Benshoof-Holler Interviewed by Barrie Louise-Switzen, Executive Producer for the Woman's Connection (sm) aired on the Manhattan
Neighborhood Network in Manhattan on cable channel 34 and RCN channel 109. .
"Just as the Wyoming wind carries some small tinge of my grandmother's voice as it blows across
the prairie, it reminds me that I found no comfort out here on the high plains after my daughter
was born and taken away. It was as if she had died. But there was no funeral. I wore no
mourning shroud. No wailing wall for me to go to pound my fists and cry to the gods. 'Carmen! Carmen!'"
--excerpt from Burning of the Marriage Hat,
( ©Copyright by Margaret Benshoof-Holler)
"This is a spell-binding and most poignant tale of a woman's search for the daughter she lost to adoption and the
secrets she uncovers along the way. A very true to life portrayal of a large segment of women who relinquished
children to adoption."
--Joe Soll, CSW, author of Adoption Healing...A
Path to Recovery, co-author of Adoption Healing... a path to recovery for mothers who lost children to adoption
Q: Where can I buy the book?
A: Ask for the book at your favorite bookstore. Or buy the book by
clicking on the this secure cart and ordering the book here. You can also buy online at any of
the links listed at the bottom of this page.
Fiction / Women's Issues / Adoption /
Grief & Recovery/ Family History / Domestic Violence / Divorce / the West /
Trade paperback, 8 1/2 X 5 1/2, 381 pages
ISBN: 0-9714473-2-2
LCC#: 2001095609
$14.95
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Author's Note
I began writing
Burning of the Marriage Hat on a journey back to Wyoming to dig into family roots and to uncover some
past mysteries. On one trip back, I also wrote a journalism piece about Matthew Shepherd,
the gay University of Wyoming student who was beaten and tied to a fence post and left to die
in sub-zero temperatures in 1998 near Laramie, Wyoming (entitled
"Love and Hate in the Equality State" and published in the Hearst-owned San
Francisco Examiner). Not being gay myself, but a woman
who grew up in Wyoming during an era when conditions for women were not the best in
any location in the U.S. (this was before the 1964 Civil Rights Act had a chance to settle in
to prevent discrimination against anyone on the basis of sex, race or religion and before the
1972 passage of Roe v. Wade), I had a feel for the Matthew Shepherd story. And wrote it. But, in
the process of writing that piece and developing the narrator Katherine in my book, I knew
there was something more that I should be writing about
Wyoming.
The denial of a murder in a family and the denial of the problem of a pregnant teen link four generations of Wyoming
women. The symbol of the Burning of the Marriage Hat relates to the cleaning up of unresolved issues and denial within the family.
Burning of the Marriage Hat is a story about a middle-class family in a small prairie town in Wyoming and the coming of age of a young woman
during the post-McCarthy era of the 1960s. It's the story of a woman who returns to her roots to release the ghosts of her
past. Set in Wyoming, known as the "Equality State" because that's where women first gained the right to vote and sit on juries in the U.S.
and also where I came of age on the cusp of the 1960s sexual revolution, the book is also about a place.
Burning of the Marriage Hat goes deep to the root of the land, the people and family, and the narrator's own sense of
unresolved issues. See Book
Info, What people are sayiing,
Frequently Asked Questions, and
Interviews.
--Margaret Benshoof-Holler
Author, Burning of the Marriage Hat
If you would like to interview the author,
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