<p>&ldquo;Nearly 150 years ago, a woman named Mary Faith Floyd wrote a story that spans Savannah, GA, New York, Blount County, TN&mdash;and the area of town in Clinton, TN, known as Eagle Bend. It was published in serial form in a newspaper, and then &hellip;</p><p>Lost. Until now.&nbsp;</p><p>Mary Faith Floyd&rsquo;s writing style is lavish &ldquo;but very readable.&rdquo; The writing brings to mind novels by Anthony Trollope and even Thomas Hardy in its description of the natural world and human interactions.&rdquo;</p><p>&ndash; Crystal Huskey, the Clinton <em>Courier-News, </em>May, 2019</p><p>It&rsquo;s not just any story, and she was not just any woman&ndash;and yes, her middle name was Defiance. Floyd, a twice-married woman, was writing in Milledgeville, GA and Knoxville, TN&mdash;using her maiden name&mdash;about equal pay for women in 1873, and about child abuse in 1885.&nbsp;</p><p>Her daughter, Laura McAdoo Gagey became a noted Parisian solonierre who helped Anatole France write <em>The Gods Will Have Blood,</em> while her son, William Gibbs McAdoo, Jr. became U.S. Treasury Secretary and ran for president in 1920 and 1924. Her husband, William Gibbs McAdoo, was a professor at the University of Tennessee.</p><p>Storyhaus Media&rsquo;s Douglas McDaniel searched for Floyd&rsquo;s lost novel for 14 years before finding it on microfilm at the University of Georgia Library in Athens in January, 2019. It was last published as a serial in the <em>Savannah Morning News</em> in 1883.&nbsp;</p><p><em>A Woman Named Defiance</em> is an anthology of some of Mary Faith Floyd&rsquo;s poetry, essays, short stories, and her second book, <em>Eagle Bend</em>, a fiction novel that celebrates the raw nobility of 19th century life in southern Appalachia, the culture and norms of Savannah society, and the hopes and aspirations of Floyd&rsquo;s protagonist, Minona Dearing, a young woman seeking to become a published author in Savannah,&nbsp;New York, and Boston just after the Reconstruction period.&nbsp;</p>