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According to her, her gray eyes lacked color, her nose was too upturned for fashion, and calling her chin firm or decisive didn’t begin to describe it. Stubborn and mule-headed were terms she’d heard more than once. Her unruly hair—the closest description came to dishwater brown shot with red flames—was best kept tied or braided back out of the way. Not that her description made much sense. Her legs were long enough to do what they were destined to do, but her hands, now that was where a hint of vanity came in. While her mother called them hands for a piano to entertain thousands, she saw them handling doctors’ instruments to save lives.
    But then she and her mother never had agreed on much. Or rather she and her stepmother. Her real mother was a distant memory of soft voice, gentle hands, and a face growing paler day by day as she succumbed to the ravages of the babe growing within her. Neither she nor the baby survived, like so many other women who died in childbirth or shortly thereafter.
    Elizabeth Rogers wanted to change what men took for granted. Women did not need to die giving birth to babies. No matter that the Bible said women would have travail in the birthing, it didn’t say so many of them needed to die.
    She turned the lamp back to low, rinsed out the cloth, hung it on the bar near the sink, and returned to the pressroom where Hans had only half of the display ad set. Tarnation, how can he possibly be so slow? Surely there are other men or boys Father could hire .
    “Look, Hans, you set to sweeping up, and I’ll finish the ad. Otherwise we will be here all night, and I have homework to do.” Thinking of the stack of books waiting made her fingers fly faster. Besides, she’d rather study than work at the newspaper any time. But the ads needed setting, and her father had a meeting that night. As a member of the Northfield town council, Phillip Rogers served the city in two ways. First, by keeping the council from spending money they did not have, and second, by taking notes for the next article he would write on what the town fathers were planning and doing. He also printed letters from citizens venting their opinions on the decisions made by the governing body. The people of Northfield held strong opinions. Having two colleges in town, St. Olaf on the hill and Carleton downtown, most likely had something to do with that.
    With the ads set and the paper ready to be put to bed, Elizabeth locked the door behind her and walked with Hans to the corner, where she said good-night. Two blocks farther on she turned right and walked down a block to the two-story brick house she’d lived in since the day she was born. Letting herself in the front door, she hung her sweater on the hall tree.
    “Mother, I’m home,” she called.
    “That’s good, dear. Your supper is in the warming oven.” The voice floated down the curved walnut stairs. As usual when her husband was out, Annabelle Rogers, Elizabeth’s stepmother, had already retired. She loved to read in bed as much as Elizabeth did, but when Phillip was home, he expected her to sit with him in the parlor while he read, so she would work on her needlepoint then.
    Elizabeth detested needlepoint or any other kind of handwork unless it involved sewing up an injury. She’d practiced on her dolls, cats, dogs—anything that needed suturing. Somehow that word appealed to her more than sewing, though the principles were the same. She’d been in her element the day her cousin split his knee open when they were out on a picnic. Elizabeth just happened to have her surgery kit along and sutured the wound as if she’d been doing so all her born days. There had hardly been a scar.
    Elizabeth traversed the long hall, not bothering to turn on the gas jets. Jehoshaphat, her golden tiger cat, met her halfway, winding his way around her legs so she’d trip if she didn’t stop to pick him up.
    Cuddling the monstrous cat under her chin and rubbing his ears until he set