Heaven's Bride and the Sexologist's Secret

Paul Harvey

Randall posted earlier about Leigh Schmidt's new book Heaven's Bride: The Unprintable Life of Ida C. Craddock, American Mystic, Scholar, Sexologist, Martyr and Madwoman. The Wall Street Journal's Saturday book review section features of nice review of the book, which concludes:

Ida Craddock was a dreamy, driven autodidact who was in her own strange way more American than the persecuting agent of the state, Anthony Comstock. Heavenly bride, free-speech martyr, full-blown American eccentric, Craddock is reanimated by Mr. Schmidt's biography.

Arthur Goldwag has an even more interesting reflection on the book over at Killing the Buddha, where he concludes:

Heaven’s Bride is a brilliant work of intellectual reclamation. Schmidt calls Craddock “an escape artist of the imagination,” who ”tried to lift herself free on the paired wings of Eros and divine love.” If her story skews perilously close to the ridiculous at times, he never for a moment allows us to forget that it is fundamentally a tale of thwarted genius, of boundless courage, and, ultimately, of visionary splendor.