Amanda/Miranda ~ by Richard Peck, 1980, 1999

Two unrelated women who looked surprisingly alike, and both wanting the same man.  What a premise for a novel!  The book also uses a word that ties it completely to the Women Unbound reading challenge:

"I was a married woman in the eyes of the law.  That was another chain that bound me" (p. 110).

The book deals with a strong woman who knows what she wants.  That woman says:

"I want the freedom you men take for granted.  But I doubt I'd find that even in the Land of the Free, as you Americans so arrogantly call it.  I want to make my own decisions.  This is the twentieth century.  Yet women are still meant to be decorative by day and compliant by night, while men have cornered the market on freedom of choice" (p. 31).

One woman finds out something about the other:

"From the time I'd found her ill, so much like Betty, I knew she was carrying a child, and now I knew who the father was" (p. 110).

Both women boarded the ship pictured on the front of the book (see the cover pictured above) and steamed toward America.  Need I tell you the name of that ship?  It was 1912, and one of the women would later think:

"I stood before one of the windows on our wedding night, and the hand that bore its new wedding band grew cold with memory of that other band it had worn.  And my other hand had signed two church registries, two marriage licenses within this single year" (p. 150).

There's also an abridged edition, published in 1999.  I've read both versions, and you get the whole story either way.  Find a copy, if you can, to see how both women were changed in the short time they knew each other.  I recommend this one as fun reading and a page turner.  Rated:  9 of 10.