SPIN: A Novel Based on a (Mostly) True Story
Peter Zheutlin
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Pegasus
6/1/21
Historical Fiction
Hardcover, 288 pages
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"...Spin gives an account of Annie’s travels fizzing with admiration for her moxie. Zheutlin, one of Annie's descendants, adeptly handles her propensity to make up stories to drum up publicity, creating an adventure that grapples with a remarkable woman's secrets and shortcomings."
-Booklist
"a thrilling story that will keep the reader breathless until the end. The reader gets to ride along with Annie as she meets the most famous people of the day and finds love and adventure in every long mile. This tale will stay with you long after Annie’s last ride.”
-The Southern Bookseller Review
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Ride away on a 'round-the-world adventure of a lifetime—with only a change of clothes and a pearl-handled revolver—in this transcendent novel inspired by the life of Annie Londonderry.
Annie Londonderry captured the popular imagination with her daring ‘round the world trip on two wheels, a trip The New York World, in October of 1895, called, “the most extraordinary journey ever undertaken by a woman.”
Londonderry was really Annie Cohen Kopchovsky, a young Jewish mother of three small children, who climbed onto a 42-pound Columbia bicycle and pedaled away into history.
Reportedly set in motion by a wager between two wealthy Boston merchants, the bet required Annie not only to circle the earth by bicycle in fifteen months but to earn $5,000 en route. This was no mere test of a woman’s physical endurance and mental fortitude; it was a test of a woman’s ability to fend for herself in the world.
Often attired in a man’s riding suit, Annie turned every Victorian notion of female propriety on its ear. Not only did she abandon her role of wife and mother, but she earned her way by selling photographs of herself, appearing as an attraction in stores, and turning herself into a mobile billboard. Indeed, the name Londonderry was borrowed from her first corporate sponsor, The Londonderry Lithia Spring Water Company of New Hampshire.
Zheutlin, a descendant of Annie's, probes the inner life and seemingly boundless courage of this outlandish, brash, and charismatic woman. In a time when women could not vote and few worked outside the home, Annie was a master of public relations, a consummate self-promoter, and a skillful creator of her own myth. Yet, for more than a century her remarkable story was lost to history. In Spin this remarkable, but flawed, heroine and her marvelous, stranger-than-fiction story are vividly brought to life for a new generation.
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Dear Reader,
On June 25, 1894, Annie Cohen Kopchovsky stood before a crowd of 500 friends, family, and suffragists at the Massachusetts State House. She then climbed onto a 42-pound Columbia bicycle and, according to The Boston Evening Transcript, “sailed away like a kite down Beacon Street.”
I first learned about my great-grandaunt Annie in the early 1990s from a complete stranger who was researching her story. But information about her was scant and no one I spoke to in my family had so much as heard of her. In 2003, I decided to give chase myself and spent four years unearthing this remarkable piece of women’s history, for Annie’s is the story of countless women of her time struggling for social equality.
One of the most stunning things I learned early on was that when she left on her ‘round the world quest Annie was the married mother of three children under the age of six. But that gave me hope that there might be a descendant who could still be alive, and who might be able to shed light on Annie's remarkable story. And there was! In Spin I have reimagined Annie’s story as she might have told it to her only grandchild, Mary, whom I tracked down during my research and who knew her grandmother quite well. (Mary is my second cousin-once-removed.)
Spin is both something very new for me and also familiar. It's my first novel, but my ninth book. Annie was the subject of my very first book, a non-fiction account of her singular odyssey, Around the World on Two Wheels: Annie Londonderry’s Extraordinary Ride (Citadel, 2007).
As she traveled, Annie excelled at spinning yarns that kept her in the spotlight, and she was not a reliable witness to the events of her own life. Thus, in the novel I found myself writing historical fiction about a woman who was writing her own historical fiction in real-time! And, it was Mary who told me about a stunning coda to Annie’s globe-trotting adventures, one I invite you to discover in the pages of the novel.
-Peter Zheutlin
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Spin Book Club Menu and Recipe
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Annie Cohen came to the United States at the age of five from Latvia. Her family settled in Boston's old West End, one of the most diverse neighborhoods in the country, filled with Italians, Poles, Irish, Eastern Europeans, and African Americans. Daily, Annie would have heard many languages spoken. In the warmer months, when tenement windows were flung open in hopes of catching a cooling breeze, the aromas of pasta sauces, pierogies, corned beef, borscht, and other foods from all corners of the globe would have filled the air, literally inviting Annie to taste the world beyond the banks of the Charles River.
Annie’s husband Max was an Orthodox Jew. Though Annie was less devout, she kept a kosher home and made familiar dishes from the old country, a luxury she did not have during the fifteen months she spent circling the globe on her bicycle. Sabbath dinner might have included borscht, potato latkes, brisket, carrots, and pound cake.
If Annie had invited a diverse group of her West End neighbors for a potluck supper, the menu might have included Italian pasta fagioli, Polish pierogies, Irish soda bread, Nigerian jollof rice, and Russian kartoshka.
In Spin, shortly after she arrives in San Francisco from Japan aboard the steamship Belgic, Annie discovers that Susan B. Anthony, the legendary suffragist, is also a guest at the Palace Hotel. A meeting between the two is arranged, much to Annie’s delight. The Palace Hotel served a tapioca pudding in the 1890s, which surely appealed to Anthony. In 1878, Jennie June’s Cook Book included Susan B. Anthony’s Apple Tapioca Pudding, a recipe that is both delicious and, like Anthony herself, straightforward.
As her audience with Miss Anthony winds down, Anthony bids Annie to stay a moment longer so she can introduce Annie to her next caller. The tall, distinguished man who enters Anthony’s hotel suite is world-famous and Annie is, uncharacteristically, star-struck: Buffalo Bill Cody is in town with his famed Wild West Show. Cody invites Annie to make a guest appearance in the show with its most famous star, the sharpshooter Annie Oakley. The show was a huge spectacle that employed hundreds of people and toured 'round the world as Annie did. You might enjoy Chuckwagon beans and biscuits, a nod to Annie's Buffalo Bill adventure.
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The Annie Londonderry Cocktail
The Annie Londonderry Cocktail celebrates the publication of Spin and toasts the 126th anniversary of the beginning of Annie Londonderry’s ‘round the world journey by bicycle.
This whiskey-based cocktail, like Annie, is bold, brash, and colorful. It draws on a quip about whiskey Annie makes to Colonel Albert Pope, one of the men behind her venture, and a brief stop she made in Sri Lanka (called Ceylon then) during her journey, one of the world’s most famous tea-producing countries.
-Peter Zheutlin
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