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Pioneer Women
The Lives of Women on the Frontier
by Linda Peavy and Ursula Smith
Published by: University of Oklahoma Press
Imprint: University of Oklahoma Press
144 Pages | 9 x 11 | 175 duotones
$26.95
“If only one book about women in the West were available, this certainly would be an appropriate choice.”—Westerners Bookshelf
Pioneer Women provides a rare look at frontier life through the eyes of the pioneer women who settled the American West. Linda Peavy and Ursula Smith vividly describe the hardships such women endured journeying west and making homes and communities on the frontier. Their hopes and fears and, most of all, their courage in the face of adversity are revealed in excerpts from journals, letters, and oral histories. Illustrated with a fascinating collection of seldom-seen photographs, Pioneer Women reveals the faces as well as the voices of women who lived on the frontier.
The authors portray a wide variety of women, from those who found liberty and confidence in undertaking "men’s work" to those who felt burdened by the wind, the weather, and the struggle of frontier life.
Ursula Smith pursued graduate work at San Francisco State University under a Ford Foundation Fellowship and taught in the San Francisco school system. She began collaborative work in women's history and biography with coauthor Linda Peavy in Bozeman, Montana. Since then Peavy and Smith have coauthored ten books, including Women in Waiting in the Westward Movement, Pioneer Women, Frontier Children, and Frontier House. Currently residing in Vermont, Smith has given presentations and workshops with Peavy across the nation, including at the Library of Congress and the White House. With Peavy she has been awarded a Redd Center for Western Studies Independent Research Award, a Smithsonian Short-Term Visitors grant, two nonfiction writing residencies at Centrum, Port Townsend, Washington, and two Paladin Awards for excellence in writing western history.
“If only one book about women in the West were available, this certainly would be an appropriate choice.”—Westerners Bookshelf
“Pioneer Women is intelligent and well-written, a welcome addition even for readers who know the field.”—Lillian Schlissel, Women's Diaries
of the Westward Journey
“Pioneer Women is the successful result of the ambitious undertaking of the authors, who wished to provide a one-volume overview of women's experiences in the American West...[The work provides] a multicultural perspective that includes the experiences of Native American women and [other] women of color as well as those of recent immigrants from Europe...a fine introduction to the history of westering women.”—Book Talk
“Focusing mainly upon the decades from the 1840s into the early 20th century, Pioneer Women...is a successful blend of the popular and academic, and its extensive bibliography a boon to readers who want to delve more deeply.”—Journal of the West
“This ‘patchword’ of women’s words and pictures captures the pioneer experience memorably and elegantly. Just as a quilt is made up of many small pieces, this book is based on a multitude of individual stories and a rich range of source material. …. This is a book to enjoy and learn from. Like an heirloom quilt, this is a book to be treasured.” —Susan Armitage, co-editor of The Women’s West and Writing the Range.
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