Trail­blaz­ing writer, pub­lish­er, and social-jus­tice activist Zoe Ander­son Nor­ris (1860−1914) pub­lished her own mag­a­zine, The East Side, call­ing for the world to alle­vi­ate the wretched­ness of Manhattan’s new­ly arrived immi­grants, espe­cial­ly East­ern Euro­pean Jews. Some­times report­ing under­cov­er dressed as a beg­gar, she doc­u­ment­ed how refugees flee­ing pogroms nav­i­gat­ed per­ilous Ellis Island check­points and eked out liv­ings in unheat­ed ten­e­ments. The East Side raged against preda­to­ry land­lords, cor­rupt police­men, incom­pe­tent char­i­ty exec­u­tives, sweat­shop own­ers (includ­ing the own­ers of the doomed Tri­an­gle Shirt­waist Fac­to­ry), and all man­ner of xeno­phobes. Zoe (as every­one called her) set out, in her words, ​“to fight for the poor with my pen.” This first biog­ra­phy of her explores how she improb­a­bly found her call­ing — she was a Ken­tucky belle turned rest­less Kansas house­wife before set­tling on New York’s Low­er East Side; how she sym­pa­thet­i­cal­ly por­trayed Jews at a time of social upheaval and vir­u­lent anti­semitism; and how her work res­onates in our own tumul­tuous times.