Twenty Thousand Roads: Women, Movement, and the West
These essays tell the stories of women who traversed the West on  their own terms over two centuries and who made connections that  they considered important rather than following precedents  established by men. Scharff (history, Univ. of New Mexico;  Brown-Eyed Girl) considers this independence to be an important  element in the shaping of the West and the nation as a whole. To  illustrate how women helped either to build or to resist  westward expansion, she examines the lives of five women, from  Lewis and Clark's Shoshone guide Sacajawea and Susan Magoffin,  who traversed the Santa Fe Trail, all the way down to rock  groupie Pamela Des Barres and her more recent arrival in  California. While only specialists in women's studies and the  history of the American West will fully appreciate how all these  essays fit into theoretical frameworks, general readers and  undergraduates will find the essays on women's suffrage in  Wyoming and Grace Hebard's role there to be especially useful.  For larger academic libraries.Stephen H. Peters, Northern  Michigan Univ. Lib., MarquetteCopyright 2002 Reed Business Information, Inc.