“
New Women in the Old West is really two books deftly stitched together. It is a brisk history of the galvanizing role played by Western women in the national struggle for suffrage. It is also a kind of group portrait of the independent, resourceful women who managed to forge places for themselves in a man’s world . . . A testament to the depth of Ms. Gallagher’s research is the range of her cast of characters. It includes Native American, black and Hispanic women as well as Asians and other immigrants . . . [She] has an eye for the telling detail . . . Both informative and enjoyable to read. Its roster of the accomplished, often heroic, women of the West is inspiring.” —
Wall Street Journal “Winifred Gallagher’s comprehensive
New Women in the Old West: From Settlers to Suffragists, an Untold American Story unearths this story through the lives of dozens of forgotten trailblazers. . . Gallagher’s rediscoveries are inspirational.” —
BookPage “A buoyant women’s history of the American West…Gallagher brings a fresh lens to the suffrage movement, and rescues many of her pioneering subjects from obscurity. Feminists will be heartened by this rich and satisfying history.” —
Publishers Weekly“Winifred Gallagher weaves her multi-racial and multi-ethnic cast of characters into a fascinating story of resilience, ambition, and tragedy that ranges widely across the nineteenth century West. The extraordinary women at the heart of her narrative are brave, determined, and often flawed, and she makes it clear why it is impossible to understand the West without them.”
—Richard White, author of California Exposures “Welcome to the Women's West—a fascinating mix of newcomers and old timers, adventurous souls all, equally dedicated to the region they called home and winning rights for their sex. Their inspirational stories speak powerfully to western women's roles in the ongoing struggle for equality and justice for all Americans.”
—Susan Ware, author of Why They Marched: Untold Stories of the Women Who Fought for the Right to Vote “Employing a wonderfully engaging biographical approach, Winifred Gallagher’s
New Women in the Old West tells the vitally important and complicated parallel stories of colonization and women’s empowerment in the West from the mid-nineteenth to the early-twentieth century. The cast of characters, from the legendary to the long overlooked, captures the full demographic diversity of the West and the enormous importance of that region to the course of the nation, while serving as a powerful reminder that ‘despite formidable obstacles, change is possible.’”
—David Wrobel, dean of the College of Arts and Sciences at the University of Oklahoma, author of America’s West: A History, 1890-1950 “Staking her broad sweep of Western history in the bedrock of individual women's stories, Gallagher expertly chronicles their collective determination to break for freedom, equality, education, land and political power. The author incorporates Native, Hispanic, African, Asian, and Anglo-American women's experiences as she tracks the rise of women's rights—‘a jagged trajectory of advances and retreats’ that ultimately succeeds. This is an eye-opening, impressive tale of empowerment that spread from West to East and transformed the nation.”
—Sherry L. Smith, author of Bohemians West: Free Love, Family and Radicals in the Twentieth Century
“A fascinating, deeply researched, long overdue book that all young women will want to read about the crucial role that women played in the development of the American West. It proves that no one individual or group changes the world alone.”
—Esther Wojcicki, cofounder of Tract, founder of Palo Alto High Media Arts Program, and author of How to Raise Successful People
