Living in fear for your life and the life of your child for 32 years can drive any person to the edge, but could it drive a person to commit murder? Patricia Dalton-Graham explained that for her great-grandmother, Isabella, it was.
Tuesday evening, Dalton-Graham was at Iola Public Library to promote her book about her great-grandmother and how she ended her suffering by shooting her abusive husband.
Isabella, a Garnett woman, was someone the townspeople of Garnett envied, Dalton-Graham said. She was beautiful and had a rich and handsome husband. What her peers didn’t know was that every night her husband, Andrew Jackson King, came home from the pool hall and beat her.
The year was 1919 and Isabella had no backing from her family nor did she have a profession of her own, Dalton-Graham said.
“He would have killed her,” Dalton-Graham said. “And being a man of that year he would have gotten by with it.”
Isabella did go to trial twice and was acquitted on murder charges.
Dalton-Graham currently lives in Garnett. She spent years researching her family history and now her book has been in the works to become a movie.
“No decisions have been made,” Dalton-Graham said about the timeline of the movie. “I am still playing around with things, but it is incredible how much has happened in less than a year.”
Dalton-Graham’s book “Isabella, a Pioneer Battered Wife” can be purchased on Amazon or through the publisher of the book, AuthorHouse. The novel is also available as an eBook.
