Author Gioia Diliberto discusses new book ‘Firebrands’ at The Book Cellar

In a room of stacked books, author Gioia Diliberto sat down with $7.95 sandwiches and bottled wine at The Book Cellar to talk about her new book “Firebrands: The Untold Story of Four Women Who Made and Unmade Prohibition.”

Published on Oct. 30, “Firebrands” tells the story of four Jazz Age dynamos who were on opposing sides of the prohibition movement: Ella Boole, the “stiff” president of the Women’s Christian Temperance Union, who was responsible for getting alcohol outlawed nationwide; the “firebrand” Assistant Attorney General Mabel Walker Willebrandt tasked with enforcing the Volstead Act; socialite Pauline Sabin, who assisted in getting the 18th Amendment repealed; and the rebel and “Queen of the Nightclubs” Texas Guinan.

Diliberto first found Willebrandt as she flipped through Time magazines from the Jazz Age while researching another assignment. She recalled seeing tennis stars and opera divas on cover after cover until she happened upon a 32-year-old female lawyer responsible for enforcing prohibition. Her findings led her to explore the prohibition movement, and in turn, the aristocratic Manhattan beauty queen Sabin.

“I began to think, ‘Wait a second, wasn’t it women who pushed to get prohibition established? Now here’s a woman who led the movement to repeal prohibition. This is a feminist story. This is a story about women,’” Diliberto said.

Diliberto started her research on the prohibition movement through a women’s lens in 2018, but it was put on hold as the libraries shut down due to the pandemic.

The task of biographing four separate women and their intertwinedness was originally daunting for Diliberto. She said she went through libraries and obtained an “incredible amount of material,” which took her a lot of time to sift through. It wasn’t until Sabin’s granddaughters came to one of her book events in Washington, D.C., with resources that the story started to truly come together. They provided Diliberto with documents, letters, old scrapbooks and insights into these women’s personalities.

“A great writer, David McCullough, said ‘There’s no such thing as the past, just other people’s presents,’ and I really feel that when I write mostly history,” Diliberto said. “The Jazz Age, I could touch it through the granddaughters, because they were there. They were living, a living link to a Jazz Age.”

Bridget Piekarz, a retired publisher who now works at The Book Cellar, praised Diliberto for her ability to write both fiction and nonfiction tales centered around women.

“This book is about different women from different sides of the country that were on different sides of prohibition,” Piekarz said. “We’ve just gone through a very interesting election period and lots of constitutional questions are going to be coming up, so it’s a very timely book.”

Diliberto has authored four biographies, three novels and a play, in addition to “Firebrands.” She also teaches writing and has contributed to The New York Times, Wall Street Journal, Los Angeles Times, Chicago Tribune, Smithsonian and Vanity Fair as a journalist.

Since its opening in 2004, The Book Cellar, located in the center of Lincoln Square, has held events similar to Diliberto’s signing multiple times a week. The events are free for all community members and book lovers alike.

“The events help local authors be found in the literary community in Chicago,” The Book Cellar bookseller Kelci Dean said.

The Book Cellar is open seven days a week and holds copies of “Firebrands” available to buy.

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Twitter: @ClareKirwan31

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