Have Justice, Will Travel: Wynona Ward
Ms Magazine - February 01, 2000
Wynona Ward keeps her eyes on the rutted dirt road as she drives through the undulating mountain valleys of central Vermont and into her past. She rounds a bend and there it is: Beanville. Just a cluster of trailers and weathered clapboard houses clinging to a hillside by a small stream, a few miles up the road from tiny West Fairlee. "See that?" Ward asks, chuckling, pointing to a hair-raisingly steep slope. "My brother and I used to sled down that on car hoods. The most dangerous thing you could imagine!"
Ward, a trucker turned lawyer, is heading north to counsel a battered woman who, after years of abuse, is seeking legal help. But on the way, she pauses to view the remains of the homestead where she, too, once quaked with fear.