First published 2011
Dorothy Wickenden reconstructs her grandmother's remarkable year through discovered letters and meticulous research. In 1916, Dorothy Woodruff and her friend Rosamond Underwood abandoned their comfortable lives in Auburn, New York, to teach at a remote Colorado mountain school. Ferry Carpenter, a charming lawyer and rancher, had recruited them with promises of adventure and modern facilities. He delivered the adventure but concealed his matchmaking intentions for the local bachelors. The women rode horseback through blizzards to reach students who wore tattered clothes and had never heard the Pledge of Allegiance. They deflected cowboy suitors, managed unruly children, and witnessed a friend's violent kidnapping by coal miners. Wickenden weaves together the original letters with interviews of descendants and regional research to illuminate both the personal transformation of two sheltered young women and the broader story of western settlement. The book reveals how this isolated year changed not only Dorothy and Rosamond but also the frontier families they served.
Genres: 20th-century, adventure, biography-memoir, american-history
Vibes: emotional, intimate, thought-provoking
Tropes: fish-out-of-water, found-family
Setting: Auburn, Colorado, New York
Period: 1916
304 pages · Hardcover · Scribner