I just finished reading “The Whip” and I have to tell you how much I absolutely loved your book. My wife read it too and has recommended it to her book club. Other than Larry McMurtry, Brian Garfield and a few others, I rarely read fiction. I am a history buff. It’s a curse. But “The Whip” had me from the start. I believe what I liked best is your books honesty. It is not necessarily a western; it’s about a person that happened to exist in that time period. It’s about feelings, emotions, anger, confusion, and even hatred; But mostly about forgiveness. I love your style of writing. For me it holds a simple rhythm that makes it a friendly read. Thank you so much for Charley and sharing her wonderful adventure. But the change of venue is nearly incidental to the epic and emotional power of the book. I was so moved by the conclusion that I wept. Across the board, politicians say Lady Butler-Sloss – whose appointment to head the child abuse inquiry has been widely criticised because of her own close links to the establishment – will have to look where no other inquiry has looked ever before – into the wonderful workings of the whip's offices. Otherwise Westminster will be accused of the ultimate hypocrisy: protecting itself from an inquiry it set up into goings on in our national institutions. There is much scepticism, however. Heathcoat-Amory says: "They have got to try, and they probably will write to ask if there were any written records, but I very much doubt if there is anything there. I think they could be going down a blind alley." Kondazian did not have an easy job turning Parkhurst’s “stranger than fiction” story into fiction, but the “The Whip” proves to be an entertaining, intense and well-wrought piece of western world building.

What a story of a courageous woman who survived a life of hardships. She was a woman, a mother, a wife, a man, a father, a lover, a whip, a drunk, an inspiration. Interesting fictional account of Charlotte “Charley” Parkhurst (1812-1879) who spent much of her adult life posing as a man in California driving for Wells Fargo. Wish there was more factual information on her life. Good, fast read. The main character, Charley Parkhurst, is so full of emotion and determination that you find yourself feeling all of her ups and downs, and cheering her on as though she were a friend. Her never-ending determination inspires me.

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But that dualism can also be extremely difficult, as when Anna, the woman who lives with Charley, wants to make their relationship sexual and Charley can neither satisfy Anna’s desires nor tell her the truth. MPs who have lost the whip may late have it restored. Of the 21 Conservative MPs who had the whip removed in September 2019, 10 had the whip restored the following month. How common is it for MPs to disobey a three-line whip? A very interesting story and one I, and most avid readers, probably have never heard or read about when thinking of the old west stories. Surprised a movie has not been made of this story. A woman stage coach drive reportedly one of the best, from a orphan raise in a New England orphanage. Lead me to read the true story of Charlotte/Charley on Wikipedia. Would encourage anyone to read the book – man and women – as I am sure it has a different meaning to each gender.

One of the reasons I was excited to read The Whip is that I lived for quite a while in Santa Cruz County, where some of the novel is set. I was also intrigued by the idea of a fact-based story about Charley Parkhurst, a woman who not only lived for most of her life as a man, but who was one of the most respected “whips,” aka stagecoach drivers, for Wells Fargo. While not a great deal is known about Parkhurst’s life, especially her early life, what is known provides a lot of rich material for any novelist, and certainly there is a great deal of drama in this fictionalized account of Parkhurst’s life. I found some of that drama moving, and there were significant stretches of the story I felt immersed in as a reader, but I ended up feeling ambivalent about both the kind of drama created around Parkhurst and the amount, which for me too often crossed the line into melodrama. On 11 December 1996, Brandreth wrote: "The question is what to do in future? The chief's [chief whip's] conclusion is: keep writing notes – he needs the information, so does the PM. But sleep easy, boys: from now on the notes will be shredded on a regular basis."

Kondazian treats Charley’s gender identity with care and complexity, demonstrating a character that defied the norms of any gender while occupying the role of both. This book, inspired by the real life story of Charlie Parkhurst, reads like a novel, yet you can’t stop thinking that it could actually be Charlie’s story. Kondazian’s descriptive style makes the reader feel they are right in the center of the action. After finishing The Whip, I was left with a sense of loss that we will never really know the truth of Charlie’s story. But her story in The Whip is so real that I let myself be almost-convinced. I loved this book and read it in record time. Kondazian knows how to weave a great story and I do hope she finds another intriguing person to write about soon. I’ll definitely be recommending this one to all my reader friends. The ‘whip being removed’ means that the MP ceases to represent their party and sits as an independent MP. Twenty-one Conservative MPs had the whip removed in 2019 after voting against the government to allow MPs to take control of the Commons timetable to pass the Benn Act, which was designed to remove the possibility of a no-deal Brexit. As of March 2022, there are eight MPs sitting as Independents, having had the whip removed. These include former leader of the Labour party Jeremy Corbyn, who was suspended from the Labour Party after refusing to accept all of the Equality and Human Rights Commission’s findings on antisemitism in the party. What a wonderful book! Brave and beautiful writing…………. A history lesson and a profound understanding of the human heart. Well,all the colors of the rainbow are in this remarkable story………. A tribute to Charley! I bought the book because of the subject matter, thinking this would be a "historical fiction" with more of an emphasis on the "historical" then the "fiction." The author does make it clear she took liberties with the story (started out with the idea of the character, kept some important events from hir life, but made up a bunch of it), so I don't feel "deceived." This is an enjoyable read, a good story with interesting characters, but I don't know how much of it is true to Parkhurst's life. However, now that I know about Charley Parkhurst, I'm definitely going to be researching hir to find out what was true, what was artistic license -- mainly, whether Parkhurt was a cis woman living as a man because women in those times had so few options for survival, or whether Parkhurst was actually a trans man (which is what I originally thought when I read the description).