For fans of Ariel Lawhon’s The Frozen River, debut historical fiction about a brothel nurse in nineteenth-century New York City who fights brutality in the sex trade and pioneers treatments for survivors of sexual violence.

A high-class brothel that entertains New York’s most powerful men, the Double Standard Sporting House funds a free clinic for women. When the Tammany Hall criminal syndicate takes over the city in 1868 and starts kidnapping girls, the house’s owner Nell “Doc” Hastings cannot stay quiet—especially after sixteen-year-old Vivie arrives at the clinic bruised and bleeding. 

Resolving to seek justice for Vivie and girls like her, Doc builds an unlikely alliance with religious reformers, a rare honest ward cop, and an alluring newspaper publisher she can’t seem to keep away from. Even with their help, Doc will have to use her sharpest tools—secrets, guile, and a surgical blade—to prevent a dark turn in the sex trade.

Full of intrigue, friendship, and love, this timely story of a heroine erased from history by the sexual double standard reminds us that women help and heal one another, even when shameless criminals come to power.

Nancy Bernhard is a journalism historian and yoga teacher, fascinated by how survivors of political and sexual violence heal through storytelling and movement. She was born in Brooklyn, and lives with her family in Somerville, Massachusetts.