Why read Staking Her Claim?

Book cover of Staking Her Claim: Women Homesteading the West

Book description

Instead of talking about the rights of women, these frontier women grabbed the opportunity to become landowners by homesteading in the still wild west of the early 1900s. Here they tell their stories in their own words-through letters and articles of the time-of adventure, independence, foolhardiness, failure, and freedom.

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Why read it?

1 author picked Staking Her Claim as one of their favorite books. Why do they recommend it?

Marsali Taylor

Author

These women did know their place – they’d measured it out, filled in the claim forms, assembled their tiny wood shack cabin or turf –roofed dugout, sewn their corn and dug their vegetable patch. The usual picture of pioneer women is as the mother of the family, but a staggering 12% of those Wild West pioneering homesteaders were single women or widows, and this is the story of over twenty of them. After introductory chapters, it’s told in their voices, through magazine articles, letters back home and memoirs written later. We learn about how they set out on their adventure,…

From Marsali's list on The best books about real women who refused to know their place.