Levi's & Lace: Arizona Women Who Made History by Jan CleereMy rating: 5 of 5 stars
Though not a wild-eyed feminist I do like to read about the women who were pioneers in our West and Southwest that have fairly recently been settled and modernized. Travelling the backroads of those areas, which are still pretty desolate and rough, makes me wonder how the women who first came here coped with the loneliness, lack of comforts, and dangers that confronted them. This book is set in Arizona and when I read about women alone or with children traveling long distances, often on foot, and making their way and impacting the lives around them I am in awe. There are high mountains, deep canyons, raging rivers ( though many have been dammed and subdued) and hot arid deserts in Arizona. Except for the cities, much of it is not very different than the land these women entered in the 19th century. Yet, they ran hotels and restaurants, taught school, nursed and doctored the sick, became lawyers and judges and started the process of taming a wild country into a territory that eventually became a State. Some of them were born there, indeed were Native American, others arrived as children with their Westward moving families and still others left Eastern cities to visit friends or relatives, fell in love with the Southwest or a man of the Southwest and never returned. All of them worked hard and thrived and most of them became beloved by those whose lives them impacted. That we all could be as strong and successful in our own lives. I will remember each one when I return to Arizona and think of them as I pass through the areas in which they worked and lived and loved and thrived.
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