Hi everyone.

I’m April White, a historian and author who dives into the archives to find stories from our past that help us better understand our present. My new book, THE DIVORCE COLONY, is about women who, often at great expense and hardship, traveled long distances across state lines to gain autonomy over their lives—a Gilded Age tale that probably sounds frighteningly modern, too.

I love writing about people, like the women of the divorce colony, who have shaped our world in unexpected ways. For instance: the 19th-century quack who tried to cure alcoholism with gold, but also developed a proto-AA, and the woman who taught people how to fly—as one of the first commercial airline passengers.

I can’t shut up about marriage and divorce, the nerdy joys of research, and why honest curiosity about our history is vital to our future. So—ask me anything!

PROOF: https://i.redd.it/zcdi7j9np3491.jpg

EDITED: Thanks everyone for an awesome publication day AMA party for THE DIVORCE COLONY.

You can learn more about the divorce colony at https://thedivorcecolony.com/ or thedivorcecolony on IG where I'm telling a lot of the stories that didn't make the book. You can get a copy of THE DIVORCE COLONY from your favorite bookseller or library (and if they don't have it on the shelves you can ask them, pretty please, to stock it).