Brave Hearted: The Women of the American West

Hickman (She-Merchants, Buccaneers & Gentlewomen) sets out to correct imbalances in the gendered ideas surrounding the idea of the “hero” in the American West. She rightly notes that stories have gone untold, and that realities have been flattened to conform to stereotypes, assumptions, and ideals. The stories she tells encompass women on groundbreaking journeys across uncharted terrain and the resiliency, resourcefulness, and struggle they endured. Well-illustrated with maps and historical photos and drawing on textual evidence from journals written by women, this book provides glimpses into the worlds of prostitutes and mothers, Black women seeking freedom, and Indigenous women brutally impacted by white colonizers, all tales that disrupt any monolithic view of what it meant to be a woman or an American then.