Brave Hearted

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Myth and misunderstanding spring from the American frontier as readily as rye grass from sod, and - like the wiry grass - seem as difficult to weed out and discard, 'but the true-life story of women's experiences in the 'Wild West' is more gripping, more heart-rending, and more stirring than all the movies, novels, folk-legends and ballads of popular imagination. Hard-drinking, hard-living poker players and prostitutes of the new boom towns, wives and mothers travelling two and a half thousand miles across the prairies in covered-wagon convoys, some of them so poor they walked the entire route, pulling their possessions behind them in handcarts, 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 -- 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 extraordinary contemporary accounts, sifting through the legends and the myths, the laws and the treaties, Katie Hickman presents us with cast of unforgettable women: the Presbyterian missionary Narcissa Whitman, who in 1837 became the first white woman to make the overland journey west across the Rocky Mountains, Cockawin, a Brule Tribe elder left for dead after the Battle of the Bluewater, forced to bind up her wounds with strips of skunk skin, Biddy Mason, the Mississippi slave who fought for her freedom through the courts of California, Olive Oatman, adopted by the Mohave, famous for her facial tattoos.Brave Hearted is an epic story about the transformation of the American west, as seen through the eyes of the women who witnessed it, a tale brought vividly to life by a brilliant social historian and a wonderful story-teller.