Notorious Woman brings us the complex story of the legal crusade of Myra Clark Gaines. When Gaines discovered she had been reared not by her biological parents, but instead by friends of Daniel Clark- her true father and one of the richest men in America- she returned to New Orleans where her deceased father's fortune remained. Gaines struggled to lay claim to her inheritance in a case that wound its torturous path through the United States legal system from 1834 until 1891. Though Gaines never recovered more than a tiny fraction of the rumored millions, Elizabeth Alexander asserts that Gaines helped instigate a new type of family law that provided special protection of women, children, and marriages.