They were hard-drinking, hard-living poker players and prostitutes of the new boom towns; wives and mothers traveling two and a half thousand miles across the prairies in covered-wagon convoys, some of them so poor they walked the entire route; African American women in search of freedom from slavery; Chinese sex workers sold openly on the docks of San Francisco; Native American women brutally displaced by the unstoppable tide of white settlers. And all were women forced to draw on huge reserves of resilience and courage in the face of tumultuous change.
Drawing on letters, diaries, and other contemporary accounts, and sifting through the legends and the myths, the laws and the treaties, Katie Hickman discusses the cast of unforgettable women she captures in new her book, Brave Hearted: The Women of the American West. She brings to life the story of the women who participated in the greatest mass migration in American history, transforming their country in the process—history not as it was romanticized, but as it was lived.
London-based Hickman is an international best-selling historian. Her book Brave Hearted: The Women of the American West (Spiegel & Grau) is available for purchase.
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