`No Place for a Woman’ definitive book on Smith

NO PLACE FOR A WOMAN: A Life of Senator Margaret Chase Smith, by Janann Sherman, Rutgers University Press, New Brunswick, N.J., 299 pp., hardbound, $24.95.

The story behind the writing of “No Place for a Woman: A Life of Senator Margaret Chase Smith,” by Janann Sherman is nearly as captivating as the book itself.

Having read a few of the 20 or more Smith biographies that have been written, I believe that Sherman’s version, told with a storyteller’s flair, may well be the definitive biography of the lady from Maine.

“My life was profoundly altered by Margaret Chase Smith,” Sherman said at a reception honoring the debut of her book held Dec. 12 at the Margaret Chase Smith Library Center in Skowhegan.

Smith’s winning a U.S. Senate seat in 1964, thus becoming the first woman to be elected to both houses of Congress, “was a personal turning point for me,” Sherman said.

Smith’s election inspired Sherman to enroll in college at age 35. Eventually she earned a full scholarship to Rutgers University and a Ph.D. in history.

Early in her studies, a colleague helped Sherman secure an interview with Smith, who had retired to Skowhegan. “But I was the last person she wanted to see,” Sherman recalled. Though Smith played the gracious hostess and seemed interested in being interviewed, she insisted on reiterating only the stories of her career that were widely known, and was disinclined to be specific about the hurdles she overcame during her congressional career that spanned more than three decades.

Ironically, Smith’s own reluctance became the fuel that fired Sherman’s passion to write. “People need to know,” she said. “I’ve got to tell this story.”

Sherman had given up trying to ask pointed questions of Smith about the demise of her presidential nomination and other details of her sometimes stormy political tenure. So with the aid of the senator’s library staff, she combed the library’s holdings to unearth clues that would cast light on obscure kernels of the senator’s life.

“She was not convinced I was the one to write her biography,” Sherman said. Yet, like a detective on a mission, Sherman virtually camped out in the Smith library every day for nearly three years working on her doctoral dissertation on Smith’s life. Nearly every day she watched Smith pass by down the hallway that connects the research site to Smith’s residence.

Then one day, the biographer’s perseverance paid off. Smith stopped and said, “I think it’s time we talked.”

“That began a long collaboration,” Sherman said. “She respected in me the things she expected in herself.”

Sherman’s 1993 dissertation, “Margaret Chase Smith: The Making of a Senator,” became the basis of her new book. Detractors who warned that the Senate was no place for a woman unknowingly provided the perfect title.

“Strength, force, authority over others — the requisites of power — were, and continue to be, considered unsuitable for females,” Sherman writes.

“I want young women to be inspired by this book,” she said in an interview. “We need to celebrate powerful women.”