Tess, Beany and Lucy live near the same sleepy canal in Seneca Falls but couldn't be more different. Tomboy Tess is the daughter of a drunken handyman, Beany the timid daughter of a runaway slave, and Lucy the ambitious daughter of a wealthy abolitionist. It's no surprise their goals and personalities clash. All three, however, are enamored of Elizabeth Cady Stanton and her First Woman's Rights Convention, but it's not until Tess rescues Stanton and Amelia Bloomer from town bullies and is rewarded with a job printing Bloomer's temperance and women's rights newspaper that they become friends. When Tess' father delivers Beany's mother to slave catchers, the girls fight to save her. A bloody battle on the towpath leaves two of them broken in body and spirit, adrift on the Erie Canal. Adventurous Tess finally gets her wish: She's leaving home. But at what price? And how will she survive? As editor of a regional publication in western New York that ran articles on the Erie Canal and local history, Georgia Mullen visited Seneca Falls to prepare a magazine story on the town and its unique women's rights heritage. A tour of Elizabeth Cady Stanton's home, peppered with funny stories about her yellow floors and absent husband, sparked the germ of a plot for A Shocking & Unnatural Incident. More inspiring were a walk along the Cayuga-Seneca Canal towpath as well as visits to the Women's Rights National Historical Park and the remains of the Wesleyan Chapel, now a monument to the First Woman's Rights Convention. Georgia and her husband live in Wilmington, North Carolina, where she is writing the third book in the Canal Tales Series.