Charity Bryant and Sylvia Drake moved into their own home in Weybridge, Vermont in 1809 and lived together as a recognized couple for the next four decades. Rachel Hope Cleves's book about them is not a novel and not a polemic: it is a meticulously documented historical biography, and this audiobook gives it a depth that the page alone cannot quite achieve. Kristin Kalbli's narration handles both Cleves's analytical prose and the embedded primary sources, diaries, letters, and poetry, with the kind of tonal control that makes the distinction between document and commentary feel meaningful. At ten hours and fifty-five minutes, the runtime is long enough to give the archive its full weight without overstaying the argument.
The conventional claim that same-sex marriage is a purely modern phenomenon runs into serious trouble the moment you spend time with Charity and Sylvia. Cleves's central argument is not that nineteenth-century Vermont was secretly progressive, but that the community around these two women found ways to accommodate and even celebrate their union within its existing moral framework. They ran a tailor shop, participated in their church, helped raise their nieces and nephews, and were regarded by their neighbours as a married couple in everything but legal terminology. The documentary evidence for all of this is substantial, and Cleves handles it with scholarly scrupulousness throughout.
Diaries and Poetry Read With Real Delicacy
What makes Cleves's scholarship so effective is the specificity of her archive. She draws on an extraordinary range of original documents, and Kalbli reads the excerpts from Charity's diaries and the poetry that passed between the two women with a delicacy that honours their private register. The audiobook does not romanticise the relationship, but it does allow the emotional texture of the primary sources to come through in a way that academic prose alone often suppresses.
One reviewer compared the experience of reading the biography to turning the pages of a suspense novel, which surprised them given the scholarly apparatus. That comparison points to something Cleves does genuinely well: she structures the narrative with enough forward movement that you want to know what happens next, even though the basic biographical facts are established early. The forty-four years of the union are not treated as a static arrangement but as a relationship that developed, was tested by community expectations and family dynamics, and endured across the full span of both women's adult lives. Readers who came to the book for family history, including one who is a descendant of the Drake family, found the detail rewarding from directions Cleves never anticipated addressing.
Letters and Coded Language Reward Close Listening
The audio format is particularly valuable for this book because of the primary source material. When Kalbli reads a passage from Charity's diary directly into the flow of the narrative, the effect is different from encountering the same passage as a block quotation on a page. It becomes part of a continuous conversation between the historian and her subjects, and the chronological distance collapses slightly in a way that print cannot replicate. The letters especially benefit from being heard rather than read, since their rhetorical conventions, the ways Charity and Sylvia addressed each other and the careful coded language they used around their relationship, are more audible than visible.
The ten-hour-and-fifty-five-minute runtime is well-suited to sustained, attentive listening rather than casual background audio. Cleves is a careful writer, and the argument builds gradually. Listeners who give the audiobook full attention across several sittings will find that the early chapters, which establish Charity's difficult journey before she met Sylvia, including her decade of precarious employment, social gossip, and family rejection, pay off substantially in the later sections dealing with the couple's established life in Weybridge and eventual loss.
The book also does something quietly important for LGBTQ history: it recovers a relationship that existed in the historical record without forcing it into a retrospective modern identity. Cleves is scrupulous about what the documentary evidence supports and what it does not, and that restraint gives the biography its credibility with historians and general readers alike.
Difficult Early Chapters Earn the Weybridge Reward
This is a scholarly biography, not a popular history. Cleves situates Charity and Sylvia within a dense context of religious community, family networks, and New England social norms, and that context is essential to the argument. Listeners expecting a straight narrative of a romantic relationship may find the analytical sections slower going than they anticipated. The academic apparatus is present in the audiobook, and Kalbli navigates it well, but some listeners may prefer to have the print edition alongside for reference.
One reviewer noted that the book's treatment of Charity's family tensions and her years of displacement before Weybridge can feel relentlessly difficult. The early chapters are genuinely hard: Charity is effectively banished from her family home and spends a decade in precarious circumstances, subject to gossip and social judgment wherever she settles. Cleves does not soften this, and Kalbli does not either. The emotional reward of the Weybridge sections is earned by sitting through the prior difficulty, and the audiobook's pacing makes that arc feel proportionate.
Rigorous History First, Romance in a Different Register
This audiobook rewards listeners with an interest in LGBTQ history, early American social history, or the history of marriage and community in New England. It is also an excellent choice for anyone who wants to engage with rigorous historical scholarship in audio form, and for listeners curious about how the archive of any historical period can be read against the grain of conventional assumption. Those who prefer biographies with a more novelistic flow may find Cleves's scholarly precision occasionally slows the narrative pace, and anyone looking primarily for romance will find the book operates in a significantly different register. Descendants of the Drake family will find additional layers of personal significance throughout.
Before You Press Play
- Read by: Kristin Kalbli brings a restrained but warm precision to Cleves's scholarly prose, handling the poetry and diary excerpts with particular care and tonal sensitivity.
- At its heart: same-sex marriage before modern recognition, community and religious belonging, the construction of historical identity
- Vibe: Intimate and quietly revelatory
- Short version: Cleves reconstructs a forty-four-year union with rigorous documentary care, and this audiobook makes the archival material feel genuinely alive across nearly eleven hours of committed listening.
Frequently Asked Questions
Is this audiobook suitable for listeners without an academic background in LGBTQ history or early American history?
Yes. Cleves writes for a general educated audience and explains the historical context clearly without assuming specialist knowledge. The audiobook has been praised by listeners from widely different backgrounds, including those who came to it purely out of interest in the Drake family genealogy with no prior knowledge of the subject.
Does the audiobook address what Charity and Sylvia's relationship would have looked like to their contemporaries, or does it apply modern frameworks?
Cleves is careful to work within the period's own vocabulary and concepts. The book explicitly challenges the idea that same-sex marriage is a modern invention while avoiding the anachronism of applying contemporary identity labels. This is one of the scholarly strengths that listeners across different backgrounds most frequently cite.
How long is the audiobook, and is the pacing appropriate for the scholarly material it covers?
The audiobook runs ten hours and fifty-five minutes. The pacing suits the careful, accumulative argument Cleves builds, and most listeners who engage with it attentively find the runtime well-matched to the depth of the subject. It benefits from being listened to in longer, focused sessions rather than broken into very short fragments.
