CONCORD – Fiction writer and Canterbury, NH, resident Sarah McCraw Crow recently released her debut novel The Wrong Kind of Woman (Mira/HarperCollins). The novel’s setting is loosely based on Dartmouth College, and at the center of the book is Virginia, a woman who finds her way through grief when she helps bring the women’s movement to an all-male college campus, Clarendon College. The Wrong Kind of Woman takes place in 1970-1971, a time of opposition to the Vietnam War, student protests, and the second wave of the women’s movement. As the rest of the world explodes in angry protests, the little campus town acts as though it will be forever preserved from the reality of the change brewing. Virginia discovers a small group of brave, bold women working tirelessly for change. She feels a kinship with these women, but can her family withstand the changes in and around her?

The Wrong Kind of Woman is the culmination of two of the author’s longtime obsessions. “One is the women of my mom’s generation, women who’d be in their 80s-90s today; I wondered how they managed the choices that were (and weren’t) open to them when they were young, like where they could go to college and what sorts of jobs they could aspire to,” said Crow. “The other is my interest in colleges like Dartmouth College, and what those colleges were like before they started admitting women.”

Newsletter