Watching the Olympics this last week, it’s not hard be awed by all of the athletes, and particularly for the women who have pushed for full participation in Olympic sports. Clearly risk takers, they and their predecessors have also redrawn the boundaries which for so long have defined “proper” women’s roles. With the celebration of Women’s History Month in just a few weeks, it’s perfect timing to uncover some of the hundreds of stories of women who followed their hearts and intellect, discovered their physical capacity and defied convention.
Nothing Daunted: The Unexpected Education of Two Society Girls in the West narrates the journey of two close friends from Smith College, who taught in a one room schoolhouse in the isolated settlement of Elkhead in northwestern Colorado in 1916. To Dorothy Woodruff and Rosamond Underwood, it seemed like a nineteenth century time warp. According to locals, it was the worst winter in anyone’s memory, and the two genteel women faced a formidable and harsh environment. The author, Dorothy Woodruff’s granddaughter, based her book on their letters home and interviews with descendents of residents of Elkhead. What, she asks, made these friends embark on the adventure of their lives?
Ice Bound: A Doctor’s Incredible Battle for Survival at the South Pole describes an even harsher environment at the Amundsen-Scott South Pole Station, where Dr. Jerri Nielsen signed on for a season as the station’s doctor. After leaving a suffocating and abusive marriage, she headed off to the unknown. What would it be like to face six months of darkness? And then the unthinkable occurred. She discovered a lump in her breast and because of the weather, she could not be flown out for treatment. Instead, she performed a biopsy on herself and oversaw her own chemotherapy, instructing non-medical staff at the station to perform procedures which she could not do by herself. Despite the gravity of the situation, she finds sustenance in newly forged relationships and her own strength of character.
River House portrays Sarahlee Lawrence’s psychic journey home from running rivers after she graduated from college to the family’s ranch in Central Oregon. Yearning for a place to center herself, she embarks on a project to build a log cabin on the property, just as her parents had done before her. The placement, notching and scraping of each log takes an enormous physical toll. In the process, she deepens her relationship with her father, with whom she feels a special kinship and love of the water, she of rivers, he of oceans and begins to appreciate what it has meant for him to live in the high desert.
Bootstrapper: From Broke to Badass on a Northern Michigan Farm is an irreverent memoir by Mardi Jo Link of her winter saving the family farm, scraping enough money together as a writer to feed her three rambunctious boys and heat her home, and surviving the emotional mind field following the separation from her husband, who just happens to live across the road.
Mardi Jo will be at the West Seattle Branch on Sunday, February 23, at 2 p.m. to read from her memoir, which won the Great Lakes Bookseller’s 2013 Book Award.
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