Ridgway Public Library

Ruby Torvald has turned Dove House, the scandalous inheritance her father left to her and her sister, into a respectable establishment. Her newest boarder is Pearl Hossfuss, a twenty-two-year-old schoolteacher from Chicago. Hiding scars within and without, Pearl has given up hope that any man would want to marry her. Her father has his own ideas, insisting she marry his clerk, a widower with five children. So Pearl flees to Dakotah Territory in response...

The Homesman is a devastating story of early pioneers in 1850s American West. It celebrates the ones we hear nothing of: the brave women whose hearts and minds were broken by a life of bitter hardship. A homesman must be found to escort a handful of them back East to a sanitarium. When none of the countys men steps up, the job falls to Mary Bee Cuddyex-teacher, spinster, indomitable and resourceful. Brave as she is, Mary Bee knows she cannot succeed...

Lydia Sanderson writes about her life on Jump Off Creek in the higher mountain country of Oregon in 1895. She tells of friendship, loss, daily struggles, and achievements.

Based on an incident on the Oregon Trail recorded by pioneer Ezra Meeker: "the meeting of eleven wagons returning and not a man left in the entire train; all had died, and been buried on the way, and the women returning alone." The novel explores the possible fate of these women, bonded by loss, growing in faith and fighting for survival.

"The popular image of the settling of the American West has primarily been of cowboys, soldiers, miners, and trappers--the white men. In Homesteading Women: An Oral History of Colorado, 1890-1950 Julie Jones-Eddy brings to light the reality of the frontier through the oral testimonies of some of the women whose strength and perseverance were essential to the establishment of families, farms, and communities in the West." "Homesteading Women is a compilation...

A powerful, moving story about two fearless women, of frienship, romance, courage and survival in the Old West. When Mexican forces threaten their homeland, Sarah Ashby McClure and her younger sister Euphemia, move their family and friends to safety. Resettling on the rugged West Texas lains, they soon become targets of Indian raids. They are determined to defend their homeland while their men fight in the Civil War.

Well-mannered, courageous Ruby leaves the Brandon mansion, where she serves as a governess, to take her sister Opal to their father's deathbed. When their father, Per, passes on, he leaves Ruby an unexpected inheritance. Per had owned the Dove House, a hotel where women "entertained" men, and liquor flowed freely. Wanting nothing to do with a house of ill repute, Ruby decides to make some changes. But not everyone is happy with her choices. She must...

A woman's dream to forge a new life for herself on the great American plains becomes a test of her pioneering spirit, her inner strength, and her undying faith. It was Marty Claridge's dream to build her new life on the frontier with her husband. But when the courageous pioneer woman is suddenly widowed, she's offered a new opportunity-- to marry a widower in a marriage of convenience. What they did not expect was that the marriage would lead to love....

These accounts of the daily lives of Kansas pioneer women are selected from 800 memoirs collected by the author's great-grandmother.