Brave Hearted

The extraordinary, dramatic story of the women of the American west

“A vivid, fascinating rag rug of cultural history that braids together stories usually kept apart . . . Gripping, eye-opening, enlightening”

Brave Hearted is not just history, it is an incredibly intense page-turning experience. To read what these women endured is to be transported into another universe of courage, loss, pain, and occasionally victory. This book is a triumph. Amanda Foreman
A vivid, fascinating rag rug of cultural history that braids together stories usually kept apart . . . Gripping, eye-opening, enlightening -- Emma Donoghue
This book delivers a blazing 360 degree view of the American story. Each page is packed with gumption and grit and genius. -- Bettany Hughes
Katie Hickman has gathered a collection of intriguingly vivid first-hand accounts written by some of the women who ventured west. . . Hickman's Brave Hearted puts the rough texture of personal experience back into the big narrative of how the west was won. Along the way, she shows us what was lost. -- Lucy Lethbridge Literary Review
Beautifully written, this gripping book explores the stories of the fierce women who helped shape the American West. -- Clover Stroud Independent
In the past 50 years there has been an explosion of scholarly research that has served to dismantle those hoary old myths about the Wild West as a white male space in which women looked worried or sashayed into a saloon bar looking for trouble. In Brave Hearted Hickman makes deft and sensitive use of this new material. The result is a glorious patchwork . . . does these extraordinary women proud -- Kathryn Hughes Sunday Times
In this richly evocative book, Hickman takes us to the crux of women's experiences in that fast- changing world, where opportunities for women were opening up in an often lawless atmosphere of greed, gambling, drinking and whoring. It was a rough ride, and the survivors were heroines, all of them. Daily Mail
'Working mainly with published sources, [Hickman] has woven together an extraordinary range of women's first-person voices - we hear from more than fifty of them - into a gripping narrative.' TLS
A triumphant narrative that brings many overlooked women into the spotlight. Booklist
As easy to read as any Western with the added advantage of showing a new version of the Old West, one vital for readers to explore. Library Journal
Full of heartrending accounts of courage and tragedy, this is a vital contribution to the history of America's frontier. Publishers Weekly
An unforgettable cast of characters brings an epic tale to life. BBC History Magazine
Absolutely compelling; telling the stories of women who for so many years have been written out of history, and making us completely rethink our image of the Wild West. -- Christina Lamb Sunday Times
[A] wide-ranging survey of the multifaceted roles of women in the 19th-century settlement of the American West... Hickman writes sensitively... A welcome corrective to the long-skewed male-centric history of westward expansion. Kirkus
A riveting new history.. Hickman's writing is exquisite; her background as a novelist brings these women into dramatic relief... A meticulous scholar, Hickman draws on diaries and memoirs to immerse us in these women's lives and offer important correctives... Brave Hearted is an alternative history of a frontier that was home for some and a fantasy for others long after the Census Bureau decided it was gone Los Angeles Times

Katie Hickman is the author of nine previous books, including two bestselling works of non-fiction, Daughters of Britannia - in the Sunday Times bestseller lists for ten months and a twenty-part series for BBC Radio 4 - and Courtesans. She has also written a trilogy of historical novels - The Aviary Gate, The Pindar Diamond and The House at Bishopgate - which between them have been translated into twenty languages. Her other books include two highly acclaimed travel books. Travels with a Mexican Circus (originally published as A Trip to the Light Fantastic) was shortlisted for the Thomas Cook Travel Book Award, and was one of the Independent's Books of the Year. Her history of British women in pre-Raj India, She-Merchants, Buccaneers and Gentlewomen, was published in 2019. Born into a diplomatic family, Katie Hickman had a peripatetic childhood, growing up in Spain, Ireland, Singapore and South America. She lives in London on a converted barge on the River Thames.

The true-life story of women's experiences in the 'Wild West' is more gripping, more heart-rending, and more stirring than all the movies, novels, folk-legends and ballads that popular imagination has been able to create. 'A triumph' Amanda Foreman 'Absolutely compelling' Christina Lamb, Sunday Times 'Beautifully written' Clover Stroud, Independent 'A blazing 360-degree view of the American story' Bettany Hughes 'Vivid, fascinating' Emma Donoghue Whether they were the hard-drinking hard-living poker players and prostitutes of the new boom towns, 'ordinary' wives and mothers walking two thousand miles across the prairies pulling their handcarts behind them, Chinese slave-brides working in laundries, or the Native American women displaced by the mass migration of the 'whites' to their lands, all have one trait in common: that of extreme resilience and courage in the face of the unknown. Reading the extraordinary accounts they have left behind them, their experiences seem as strange to us today as it must have been to have lived through them, perhaps even stranger. They were put to the test, in terms of sheer survival, in ways that we can only dimly imagine.

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