Book I, The Lady of Athenia, deals with a 23-year-old widowed Southern Belle, punished by vengeful Union Officers who order the destruction of her Mississippi plantation, Athenia, forcing the now destitute Davida Julianna Asherton to head West. After much hardship, she finds herself in the middle of a conspiracy to

Contains letters, journals, and reminiscences showing the impact of the frontier on women's lives and the role of women in the West.

This work provides factual accounts of women of the Old West in contrast to their depictions on film and in fiction. The lives of Martha Calamity Jane Canary and Belle The Bandit Queen Starr are first detailed; one discovers that Starr was indeed friends with notorious bank robbers of the

This four-volume set documents the complexity and richness of women's contributions to American history and culture, empowering all students by demonstrating a more populist approach to the past. • Provides significantly more detail than typical reference works on women's history and culture, enabling readers to better appreciate the contributions of

"In this highly readable and entertaining book, Jeanine Basinger shows how the "woman's film" of the 30s, 40s, and 50s sent a potent mixed message to millions of female moviegoers. At the same time that such films exhorted women to stick to their "proper" realm of men, marriage, and motherhood,