Friday, July 1, 2011

What I'm Reading

Nothing Daunted: The Unexpected Education of Two Society Girls in the West by Dorothy Wickenden.

From the blurb (that's librarian-speak for the inside front cover text):

In the summer of 1916 Dorothy Woodruff and Rosamond Underwood, close friends from childhood and graduates of Smith College, left home in Auburn, New York, for the wilds of northwestern Colorado. Bored by their society luncheons, charity work and the effete young men who courted them, they learned that two teaching jobs were available in a remote mountaintop schoolhouse and applied--shocking their families and friends. "No young lady in our town," Dorothy later commented, "had ever been hired by anybody."

Nothing Daunted is the story of Ros and Dorothy's adventures in the mountains of Colorado and their lives after returning home.

I was enchanted by the prospects of the story, told by Dorothy's granddaughter Dorothy Wickenden. There was one quote that really caught me and wouldn't let me go. Ferry Carpenter, the man who advertised for teachers for the Elkhorn school, wrote Ros and Dorothy prior to their leaving for the west and advised, "If you have a 22 you had better bring it out as there are lots of young sage chicken to be found in that country and August is the open season on them."

I'm still not sure if that would have made me eager to go or determined to stay.

Happy reading.

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