Scholar Susan Godwin is hooked when she comes across the captivating story of Mary of Modena—a seventeenth-century Italian princess who was only fourteen when coerced into marriage with the future king of England, James II, yet went on to cultivate a court full of women writers in an age when female authorship was rare. How did Mary achieve such a feat?

Rain Dodging is Susan’s creative nonfiction account of the years-long search upon which this question—and her own unquenchable curiosity—launched her. Godwin travels through both space and time, solo adventuring through Britain in pursuit of truth and, in a spicy parallel arc, chronicling her own cluttered but resilient feminist path. From schizophrenic lovers to out-there musicians to one unhinged mother, Susan tells the story of her personal enlightenment even as she visits the palaces and manor houses in England and Scotland Mary once inhabited and pores over materials in Oxford’s stunning 400-year-old Bodleian Library, finding moments of transcendence and unexpected delight along the way.

Join Susan in this irreverent and illuminating journey—a fascinating account of the late Stuart monarchy, the progression of feminist history, and the unexpected connection between the two.

Susan J. Godwin is a fervent educator, writer, and freelance artist whose world has always been steeped in books, from Harold and the Purple Crayon—she couldn’t resist drawing on her bedroom wall, no matter how many reprimands—to her first job as a library book mender in her Shaker Heights High School basement to teaching English at the prestigious University School of Nashville. A former Oxford scholar, Godwin has received writing awards from the University of Michigan, Middle Tennessee State University, and Bread Loaf School of English. Though writing is her true passion, she is also a visual artist working primarily in oils and pastels. Her home is outside of Nashville, in Dickson, TN, on the banks of a winding Tennessee river, in a hayloft renovated by her sweet, sexy husband, Tony—with help from their rotty, Roady!