Women of the West
Winner of the Pacific Northwest Booksellers Award.\ A myth-shattering look at the women who helped to settle the West, told through their own words and illustrated with 150 period photographs. Through these photos, plus diaries, memoirs, letters, and journals, Women of the West introduces 11 real frontier women whose words combine to re-create a place and time when resourcefulness and courage were demanded of everyone. This is American history, not as it was romanticized, but as it was lived....
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"An elegant connective narrative and 150 remarkable photographs put ....the [nineteenth] century's history in more realistic perspective."—Los Angeles Times Cleveland Plain Dealer Anyone interested in American history should read [it]....the most handsome of recent books emphasizing the role of pioneer women.
\ Cleveland Plain DealerAnyone interested in American history should read [it]....the most handsome of recent books emphasizing the role of pioneer women.\ \ \ \ \ Kansas City Star[A] human appeal rarely touched in most history books of the westward expansion.\ \ \ Los Angeles TimesAn elegant connective narrative and 150 remarkable photographs put ....the [nineteenth] century's history in more realistic perspective.\ \ \ \ \ San Francisco ChronicleAn authentic, refreshing and even inspiring view of life on the frontier.\ \ \ \ \ Seattle Times[H]andled with a very human touch throughout all these diaries.... this is quite a book.\ \ \ \ \ St. Petersburg Times[Evokes] a striking portrait of everyday life among nineteenth-century women.\ \ \ \ \ KLIATTThe faces of pioneer women, white, black, and Native American, frozen forever by the magic of photography, stare out at the reader in this "document of personal experience." Along with the splendid collection of photographs gathered by Carol Olwell, the extracts culled from the journals, diaries, and letters of these rugged women tell a story often neglected by other sources. Through the words of some of these strong women, the harshness of frontier life comes alive, touched by the ordinary, the commonplace, the humdrum of everyday life with its struggle to survive the elements, the pangs of loneliness, the births under adverse conditions, disease, and the death of loved ones, as well as the threat of attack by predators. Some of the women were hard-headed business types, other teachers and mentors, or domestic workers, former slaves, minority immigrants, and respectable females and their "fallen" sisters, but they all contributed to the American story. In all, about 800,000 women joined the trek to the West. Many left no record of their experiences, but through the voices of 11 of these women and pictures of countless others, American frontier life comes into clearer view, enlarging the respect and admiration due these valiant women who joined the men who moved West. Luchetti and Olwell's book provides a welcome addition to American women's studies. KLIATT Codes: SA—Recommended for senior high school students, advanced students, and adults. 2001, Norton, 239p. illus. notes. bibliog., $22.50. Ages 16 to adult. Reviewer: Mary T. Gerrity; Upper Marlboro, MD , September 2001 (Vol. 35 No. 5)\ \
