PositiveThe Minneapolis Star TribuneStrong words for the impassive wife, mother and dressmaker seen in photos. But Parsons’ life was one of contradiction. Born to an enslaved black mother, she championed the cause of white working classes ... Biographer Jacqueline Jones uses research to give Parsons’ saga epic sweep, recapturing a time that could have reshaped the United States if things had gone differently. She traces the fiery Parsons from antebellum Virginia to post-Reconstruction Texas to Chicago, where the deadly Haymarket affair of 1886 became her defining moment ... Parsons made good copy then, and she does now. Many scenes will have the reader thinking, 'Oh, no, she didn’t.' She did.