Riding Freedom

Riding Freedom, written by Pam Muñoz Ryan, was originally published in 1998 and won several awards, including the 2000 California Young Reader Medal. This fictionalized biography of the real Charlotte Parkhurst, better known as One-eyed Charley, tells the story of the first female to vote in the United States. She became a famous stagecoach driver and a property owner. How she accomplished these things before women were granted suffrage is detailed in this fast-paced narrative geared toward young readers. It should be noted that the author shifted the narrative to the mid-1800s and elided certain events of Parkhurst’s life in consideration of her young audience. This study guide refers to the Scholastic Inc. edition with drawings by Brian Selznick, published in 2007.

Plot Summary

Charlotte Parkhurst loses her parents in a horse-drawn wagon crash when she is just two years old. She is sent to live in an orphanage in New Hampshire where she is the only girl. Growing up alongside boys, she doesn’t fit the mold of a typical girl. The cook, Mrs. Boyle, keeps her in the kitchen because she wants Charlotte to do her work for her. Mrs. Boyle hides Charlotte when parents come to look for a child to adopt so that she won’t lose her best worker.

Charlotte prefers to work with Vern in the horse stables. She is very skilled with horses and an excellent rider. She competes with the boys and almost always wins. One of the boys at the orphanage is jealous of her and complains to the orphanage overseer, Mr. Millshark, about allowing a girl to race alongside boys. Mr. Millshark bans Charlotte from racing and working with the horses in the stables. Simultaneously, Charlotte’s best friend, Hayward, gets adopted. She feels she cannot possibly live at the orphanage without Hayward and the horses. So, she devises a plan to run away.

Charlotte cuts off her hair and dresses as a boy. She uses the name Charles, or Charley. She uses borrowed money from Vern to catch a coach from New Hampshire to Massachusetts. She leaves confusing clues behind so that people in the orphanage might think she drowned. No one suspects that she is a girl, and she manages to find a hayloft in a horse stable to sleep in. After a few nights of sneaking into the loft and cleaning the horse stables below, the stable owner, Ebeneezer, catches on. He confronts Charlotte and offers her a job. He is very impressed with her hard work and gives her food and a place to sleep. They develop a trusting and loving friendship. One day, Mr. Millshark arrives in town, telling Ebeneezer that a young girl who is very skilled with hoses ran away from his orphanage and he wants to find her. Ebeneezer realizes that his new stable boy must be this missing girl. He doesn’t like the way Mr. Millshark speaks or acts and can tell that turning Charlotte over to him would be dangerous, so he helps Charlotte cover her identity and remain with him.

Charlotte stays with Ebeneezer for years, training and learning to drive coaches for his company. Together they build a reputation as the best stagecoach company, and “Charley” is well known as the best driver in the country. Charlotte enjoys driving coaches so much that she continues to masquerade as a young man because she doesn’t want to give up her career. She carefully dresses and grooms herself so that no one is the wiser. When the gold rush hits, Charlotte hears stories of young men making good money quickly and buying ranches, something she could never afford on the East Coast. Two coach drivers invite her to join them in California, as they are building their own company and need a great driver. She decides that if she wants to realize her dream of owning a ranch, she must go west. When she announces her departure, Ebeneezer finally admits that he knows she is a girl, and that he is worried about her leaving for California. She convinces him it is what she must do, and he agrees to come visit when she gets her own place.

When Charlotte arrives in California she sees a woman standing on a platform before a crowd of jeering men, passing out pamphlets about the women’s right to vote movement. This is almost 100 years before women actually receive the legal right to vote in America. Charley steps up to the woman and tells her she is brave. This experience ignites a secret desire in Charlotte, the desire to vote and then reveal her identity as a woman to make the point that women know their own minds as well as men.

On Charlotte’s first day working with the untamed mustangs in California, she suffers a horse kick to the head that leaves her blind in one eye. She is so determined to achieve her dream that she forces herself to learn to drive a six-horse coach with only one eye. It is not easy, but she never gives up. She learns to use all of her senses and perfects the art of driving with one eye. She comes to be known in California as One-eyed Charley. Charlotte eventually saves enough money to buy a piece of property in central California, where she plans to build a way station. She writes to Hayward and invites him to join her. At the orphanage they had always dreamed of living on their very own ranch together. Hayward comes to visit, and he decides that after he finishes his work in Missouri he will return and join her. Ebeneezer eventually moves out to join her as well, helping her run the way station. She also buys a small piece of adjacent property to help a widow who was going to lose her home to foreclosure. Charlotte continues to live as a man and eventually places her first vote in 1869, under the name Charles Parkhurst. The story ends with her casting her ballot and declaring that she placed the vote in hope that when people learn she is really a woman, she will have made a difference for those who could not vote.