"Without realizing it, Harriet Beecher Stowe had written America's first protest novel, the first book written against a law," declares Fritz about Uncle Tom's Cabin. Harriet Beecher Stowe and the Beecher Preachers traces the development of Stowe's social consciousness and how its development affected her writing. Key to Fritz's reasoning is the influence of Stowe's father, Lyman Beecher, then one of the most famous people in America. Fritz unveils irony in Lyman Beecher's efforts to get his sons to follow him, for his sons abandoned his unforgiving Puritanical view of Christianity for a more loving view of Christ, with the ultimate irony being found in the success of a daughter at preaching through writing that far exceeded that of any of his sons. Fritz cites letters in which Stowe says that she will preach through her writing; she would be the ideal son, the boy her...