Cranston Public Library

When May Dodd journeys west into the unknown, it's a far better fate than the life she left behind. Committed to an insane asylum by her blue-blood family for loving a man beneath her station, May's only hope of freedom is a secret government program sending "civilized" women to become the brides of Cheyenne warriors. This is the story of May's breathtaking adventures caught between two worlds, loving two men, living two lives.

"In the lawless, drought-ridden lands of the Arizona Territory in 1893, two extraordinary lives collide. Nora is an unflinching frontierswoman, alone in a house abandoned by the men in her life--her husband, who has gone in search of water for the parched household, and her two older sons, who have gone in search of their father after his return is delayed. Nora is biding her time with her youngest son, a boy with a bad eye who is convinced that a...

A haunting tribute to the heroic pioneers who shaped the American Midwest This powerful novel by Willa Cather is considered to be one of her finest works and placed Cather in the forefront of women novelists. It tells the stories of several immigrant families who start new lives in America in rural Nebraska. This powerful tribute to the quiet heroism of those whose struggles and triumphs shaped the American Midwest highlights the role of women pioneers,...

A woman's life on the Colorado frontier, told by Mattie McCauley, a homestead bride. She describes the hardships--weather, childbirth, Indians--how she saved Luke, her husband with some fast shooting and how she was betrayed by him when Luke's old flame, Persia came to town. Yet she remains by his side for the sake of the family and the children. By the author of The Persian Pickle Club.

"A frontier woman now, she had triumphed over the worst life could offer -- or had she?" --

A lovely eastern schoolteacher faces the frontier with firm resolve "never to marry one of those undependable, rough and rowdy adventurers of the West."

In pioneer Nebraska, a woman leads where no man will go. Soon to be a major motion picture directed by Tommy Lee Jones, The Homesman is a devastating story of early pioneers in 1850s American West. It celebrates the ones we hear nothing of: the brave women whose hearts and minds were broken by a life of bitter hardship. A "homesman" must be found to escort a handful of them back East to a sanitarium. When none of the county's men steps up, the job...

Book 3 of Yukon Quest historical fiction series set in Alaska in the late 1800s. Miranda Colton, presumed dead, finds herself under the care of a native Alaskan and a studious botanist from England, Teddy Davenport. Miranda only longs to find her friends and and continue north. She fears that her chances are diminishing with each passing day. Teddy is deeply committed to his research of the unique landscape of the rugged Alaskan frontier. But despite...

Ariana loves her life as a schoolteacher in a little frontier town. But one evening after classes are done and she prepares to hurry home, her life changes in an instant when a band of rough outlaws abducts her and takes her far away from all she has ever known. Trapped in a small shack, Ariana prays and waits, her emotions swinging between terror and boredom as days stretch into weeks. Still, the outlaws refuse to tell her why they've taken her or...