The Double Standard Sporting House

A Novel

by Nancy Bernhard

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Pub Date Jan 20 2026 | Archive Date Dec 31 2025

She Writes Press

Historical Fiction | Women's Fiction

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Description

For fans of Ariel Lawhon’s The Frozen River, debut historical fiction about a brothel nurse in nineteenth-century New York City who fights brutality in the sex trade and pioneers treatments for survivors of sexual violence.

A high-class brothel that entertains New York’s most powerful men, the Double Standard Sporting House funds a free clinic for women. When the Tammany Hall criminal syndicate takes over the city in 1868 and starts kidnapping girls, the house’s owner Nell “Doc” Hastings cannot stay quiet—especially after sixteen-year-old Vivie arrives at the clinic bruised and bleeding.

Resolving to seek justice for Vivie and girls like her, Doc builds an unlikely alliance with religious reformers, a rare honest ward cop, and an alluring newspaper publisher she can’t seem to keep away from. Even with their help, Doc will have to use her sharpest tools—secrets, guile, and a surgical blade—to prevent a dark turn in the sex trade.

Full of intrigue, friendship, and love, this timely story of a heroine erased from history by the sexual double standard reminds us that women help and heal one another, even when shameless criminals come to power.

A Note From the Publisher

Nancy Bernhard is a journalism historian and yoga teacher, fascinated by how survivors of sexual and political violence heal through storytelling and movement. Having earned a BA in religion at Dartmouth, a PhD in American History at the University of Pennsylvania, and taught at Harvard, Bernhard turned her indignation over the sexual double standard into an absorbing tale rooted in the 19th century history of Tammany Hall. She was born in Brooklyn, and lives with her family in Somerville, Massachusetts.

Nancy Bernhard is a journalism historian and yoga teacher, fascinated by how survivors of sexual and political violence heal through storytelling and movement. Having earned a BA in religion at...

Advance Praise

“A thought-provoking and moving exploration of the hard work and heart one woman puts into serving those who have suffered sexual violence and others who need a safe way to make a living in tough circumstances. Bernhard reveals with care the complicated layers that lie within the walls of the Double Standard Sporting House and shows how the kindness of one soul can bring healing and second chances.”

- Marjan Kamali, bestselling author of The Lion Women of Teheran and The Stationary Shop

“This inventive novel manages, first of all, to bring the political chaos of 1868 New York City into shocking focus. It is against the backdrop of the corruption and crime fostered by the Tammany Hall political machine that Doc Nell Hastings fights for women’s health and welfare. Her focus is on women who are forced by circumstance to prostitution to survive. This day-to-day battle demands all Doc’s medical skills, compassion informed by pragmatism, intelligence and social agility. The Double Standard Sporting House is a moving story that captures the hypocrisies facing women of every era.”

- Sara Donati, bestselling author of The Gilded Hour and Into the Wilderness

Available Editions

EDITION	Paperback
ISBN	9798896360520
PRICE	$17.99 (USD)
PAGES	256

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