Adventures in the Rocky Mountains, 2007, Isabella Bird
(originally published as A Lady’s Life in the Rocky Mountains in 1879)
I had a teacher in high school who had apparently done his thesis on frontier narratives, as they seemed to be about all we read for a quarter. They almost all seemed to be about white women getting kidnapped by native Americans, with lots of salacious innuendo for the folks back east.
This one is actually good, though, because there’s none of that. Just a woman riding around on a horse, hanging out with cowboys and fighting bears.
Entries (RSS)
“Mary, you got pluck.”
“Thank you, Mr. Grant…”
“I HATE pluck.”
(OK, so it was really “spunk”.)
“Just a woman riding around on a horse, hanging out with cowboys and fighting bears.”
Randomly swapping around the nouns “horses”, “cowboys”, and “bears” can actually help create an even more interesting story.
She was sort of a precurser to the Nancy Drew books, if I remember correctly.
That’s a really great cover.
Also exerting her civilizing influence on the rough and savage males. It’s kinda Victorian that way.