Staking Her Claim: Women Homesteading the West
Marcia Meredith Hensley
Instead of talking about women’s rights, these frontier women grabbed
the opportunity to become landowners by homesteading in the still wild
west of the early 1900s. Here they tell their stories in their own words—through
letters and articles of the time—of adventure, independence, foolhardiness,
failure, success, and freedom.
“Reading these accounts by women homesteaders is like discovering
a dusty trunk in a beloved grandmother’s attic where you sift through
stacks of letters bound by faded ribbons, open brittle pages of a diary,
or leaf through yellowing magazines. Time will suspend as you are transported
to another era, and you may not want to return.”
•• Susanne George Bloomfield, author of The Adventures of
The Woman Homesteader
“This book is an invaluable gift. Marcia Meredith
Hensley achieves here what no other writer or historian has done in gathering
and explaining the important writings of dozens of single women homesteaders
in the interior northern West. Hensley stakes her own claim as a new
authority in this rewarding collection.”
•• Richard W. Etulain, author of Beyond the Missouri: The
Story of the American West
“Staking Her Claim is doubly rewarding—for Hensley’s
wealth of data about women who stepped outside the picture-frame of myth
on the Western homestead frontier, and for the pure pleasure of hearing
these women’s stories in their own words.”
•• Mary Clearman Blew, author of Jackalope Dreams: A Novel
• 9780931271908 • trade paper • 304 pp • $19.95 Order Now!