Marie Equi

Michael Helquist’s superb biography of Dr. Marie Equi (1872–1952) is a riveting page-turner that keeps on giving. This is the far-reaching story of a Pacific Northwest woman who fearlessly challenged conventions of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries—a woman who openly risked becoming an outcast because of her lesbianism and radical activism in pursuit of social and economic justice. Firmly grounded in Helquist’s rigorous and meticulous research, and seamlessly enriched by his attention to time and place, this long-awaited biography of Equi—the first—never disappoints. Undaunted by the loss of many of Equi’s personal papers after her death, Helquist located a wealth of information in oral histories, newspapers, and archives, including an extensive file compiled by the U.S. Department of Justice prior to Equi’s sedition trial and imprisonment in San Quentin State Prison. Equi’s life in the West began at age nineteen when she left her family and the textile mills of New Bedford, Massachusetts, to join her first longtime woman companion on a homestead near The Dalles, Oregon. Because the school superintendent refused to pay the teaching salary owed to her companion, Equi characteristically took matters into her own hands and publicly horsewhipped him. Over time, Equi was involved in a number of lesbian relationships; she lived for fifteen years with the niece of the founder of the Olympia Brewing Company, and the two women raised their adopted daughter.

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