Outrageous: The Victoria Woodhull Saga, Volume 1: Rise to Riches

This debut novel won 10 literary awards. OUTRAGEOUS, traces an icon of Victorian American feminism, Victoria Woodhull from childhood poverty and horrific abuse to becoming one of the wealthiest women in America, founding the first woman-owned brokerage firm on Wall Street, and the first woman-owned newspaper. Victoria will stop at nothing to achieve her destiny.
 
2016 Winner of three Gold Medals: IBPA Ben Franklin, Bill Fisher Award for Best First Book by a Publisher, the IPPY Award for Best Historical Fiction, and Gold Medal for Historical Fiction/Personage by Reader's Favorite. Other Awards: Finalist in the Historical Fiction category of the 2016 Next Generation Indie Book Awards, Second Place winner of the IndieReader Discovery Award for Best Fiction, Best New Fiction in the International Book Awards for 2016, Finalist in two categories Independent Author Network Book of the Year, Chantecleer Goethe Award Finalist, Shelf Unbound Notable 100, and one of IndieReader's Best Books of 2016.
 
Historical fictionalized account of Victoria Woodhull's rise to presidential candidate and wealth, coming from poverty and abuse. What compels a woman and her youngest sister to overcome abject poverty and violent abuse to grow up to defy convention and obliterate every barrier to become the first women to own and operate a Wall Street brokerage firm and publish their own newspaper?

How did Victoria Claflin Woodhull (1838 - 1927) become the first woman invited to speak to the United State Congress, and then the first female to run for president. What made Tennessee Celeste Claflin (1845 - 1923) so beguiling that the richest man in America, Cornelius Vanderbilt, fell completely in love with her?
 
Volume One of The Victoria Woodhull Saga tells the poignant, lascivious, and compelling inside story of how the sisters worked closely with Cornelius Vanderbilt, who at age 74 fell in love with the beguiling 24-year old Tennessee. Victoria provided the titan of industry "Inside Her Information" gathered through the soiled sisterhood, the ladies of the evening working at the top seven brothels servicing the rich and famous of New York City. 

This relationship resulted in the great lion of industry having his last public roar as together they manipulated the financial markets and created the impending collapse of the U.S. economy in the gold scandal of 1869. To avert the crash, President Ulysses S. Grant provides the richest man in America insider information on the gold market and telegrams Vanderbilt that his railroad company is Too Big To Fail! Vanderbilt was proclaimed TheSavior of the American Economy for intervening in a crisis he helped create.

View Victorian America through the eyes and thoughts of one of its leading heroines., Victoria Woodhull. Watch as the infighting and elitism of the earliest suffrage women degrading, castigating, and denouncing other passionate suffrage rights women delayed woman suffrage and equal legal standing for five decades. Learn wonderful anecdotes of the origins of products and phrases used today. Learn the story of Reverend Henry Ward Beecher, the most popular man inAmerica, who transformed Christianity from his father's fire and brimstone theology to one of a compassionate and loving Jesus, who will redeem all who turn to salvation with complete confession of their sins.The reverend's personal life did not imitate his lofty and popular theology of his weekly sermons at Plymouth Church. He was a notorious womanizer, often bedding, and sometimes impregnating the wives, sisters, and daughters of his most ardent trackers and deacons of the church.

Written in the first person from Victoria's viewpoint, Neal Katz weaves a compelling page-turning story that cleverly unfolds history while providing a wonderfully entertaining ride.

Neal chose to write in first person using Victoria s words, thoughts, and point of view to tell the tale, inviting the reader to see through her eyes. The style is magic realism along the lines of Allende, Marquez, and Kathleen McGowan (The Magdalene Trilogy). This is an expression of the HeForShe solidarity movement for gender equality championed by Emma Watson, and Neal proudly proclaims himself a male feminist!