Nothing Daunted
Subtitle: The Unexpected Education of Two Society Girls in the West
Publisher: Scribner
Published: 2013
Place of publication: New York, USA
Format: trade paperback
ISBN-13: 9781410456359
First sentence: A passenger train pulled into the Hayden depot at 10:45 p.m. with a piercing squeal of brakes, a long whistle, and the banging of steel shoes against couplers.
Description: In the summer of 1916, Dorothy Woodruff and Rosamond Underwood, bored by society luncheons, charity work, and the effete men who courted them, left their families in Auburn, New York, to teach school in the wilds of northwestern Colorado. They lived with a family of homesteaders in Elkhead Mountains and rode to school on horseback, often in blinding blizzards. Their students walked or skied, in tattered clothes and shoes tied together with a string. The young cattle rancher who had lured them, Ferry Carpenter, had promised them the adventure of a lifetime. He hadn't let on that they would be considered dazzling prospective brides for the locals. Nearly a hundred years later, Dorothy Wickenden, the granddaughter of Dorothy Woodruff, found the teachers' buoyant letters home, which captured the voices of the pioneer woman, the children, and other unforgettable people the women got to know.  In reconstructing their journey, Wickenden has created an exhilarating saga about two intrepid women and the "settling up" of the West.