O My America!: Six Women and Their Second Acts in a New World

by Sara Wheeler

In O My America! , the travel writer and biographer Sara Wheeler embarks on a journey across the United States, guided by the adventures of six women who reinvented themselves as they chased the frontier west.

Wheeler's career has propelled her from pole to pole―camping in Arctic igloos, tracking Indian elephants, contemplating East African swamps so hot that toads explode―but as she stared down the uncharted territory of middle age, she found herself in need of a guide. "Fifty is a tough age," she writes. "Role models are scarce for women contemplating a second act." Scarce, that is, until she stumbled upon Fanny Trollope.

In 1827, Fanny, mother of Anthony, swapped England for Ohio with hopes of bolstering the family finances. There, failure and disappointment hounded the immigrant for three years before she returned home to write one of the most sensational travel accounts of the nineteenth century. Domestic Manners of the Americans made an instant splash on both sides of the Atlantic, where readers both relished and reviled Trollope's caustic take on the newly independent country. Her legacy became the stuff of "Trollopize" emerged as a verb meaning "to abuse the American nation"; Mark Twain judged her the best foreign commentator on his country; the last king of France threw a ball in her honor. Fanny Trollope was forty-nine when she set out for America, and Wheeler, approaching fifty herself, was smitten. Fanny was living proof of life after fertility, and she led Wheeler to other the actress and abolitionist Fanny Kemble, the radical sociologist Harriet Martineau, the homesteader Rebecca Burlend, the traveler Isabella Bird, and the novelist Catherine Hubback―women born within half a century of one another who all reinvented themselves in a transforming America, the land of new beginnings.

In O My America! , Wheeler tracks her subjects from the Mississippi to the cinder cones of the Mayacamas at the tail end of the Cascades, armed with two sets of maps for each one current and one the women before her would have used. Bright, spirited, and tremendous tantrum-throwers, these ladies proved to be the best travel companion Wheeler could have asked for. "I had more fun writing this book than all my previous books put together," she writes―and it shows. Ambitious and full of life, O My America! is not only a great writer's reckoning with a young country, but also an exuberant tribute to fresh starts, second acts, and six unstoppable women.

Genres: History, Travel, Nonfiction, Biography, Womens, Feminism, American History

304 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 2013

About the author

Sara Wheeler was brought up in Bristol and studied Classics and Modern Languages at Brasenose College, University of Oxford. After writing about her travels on the Greek island of Euboea and in Chile, she was accepted by the US National Science Foundation as their first female writer-in-residence at the South Pole, and spent seven months in Antarctica.

In her resultant book Terra Incognita: Travels in Antarctica, she mentioned sleeping in the captain’s bunk in Scott's Hut. Whilst in Antarctica she read The Worst Journey in the World, an account of the Terra Nova Expedition, and she later wrote a biography of its author Apsley Cherry-Garrard.

In 1999 she was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature. From 2005 to 2009 she served as Trustee of the London Library.

She was frequently abroad for two years, travelled to Russia, Alaska, Greenland, Canada and North Norway to write her book The Magnetic North: Travels in the Arctic. A journalist at the Daily Telegraph in the UK called it a "snowstorm of historical, geographical and anthropological facts".

In a 2012 BBC Radio 4 series: To Strive and Seek, she told the personal stories of five various members of the Terra Nova Expedition.

O My America!: Second Acts in a New World records the lives of women who travelled to America in the first half of the 19th Century: Fanny Trollope, Fanny Kemble, Harriet Martineau, Rebecca Burlend, Isabella Bird, and Catherine Hubback, and the author's travels in pursuit of them.

Reviews

[Katharine · Rating 1 out of 5]

There is little more depressing to me than a book that should have been fascinating due to its fascinating premise and content...and yet is ruined by the author's writing. It is terribly uneven, and the flow was irrevocably interrupted every time the author breaks the narrative with her personal journey, whether it is a moldy description of an (unimportant) watering hole she visited, or a reference to her children (that I highly doubt any reader would genuinely be interested in.)

I will give this book credit for its wide array of female subjects. The discussion of Fanny Kemble was the book's highlight for me, particularly as I had never (shamefully) heard of her. But then I am a Southerner who was unfortunately NOT taught genuine Southern history in primary school.

Kemble was a fiery British Shakespearean actress who married a Georgian plantation owner and quickly woke up to the reality and horrors of slavery. She tried to intercede for the slaves, going on hunger strike and at the risk of losing her daughters she later divorced the (horrible!) man and published a book about her experiences which the Georgia Historical Society credits as turning British public opinion against the Confederacy. Read it for Kemble if you must, or rather find a copy of her "Journal of a Residence on a Georgian Plantation in 1838–1839" which I am now going to search for with all my might.

But otherwise, you can skip this one. The author was on some Elizabeth Gilbert-inspired self-indulgent "mission" to find role models to assuage her fear about approaching menopause, and at regular intervals in the book she pats herself on the back for having a much better modern life than her courageous, trailblazing subjects, not to mention often giving her subjects withering physical descriptions and scrutinizing their sexual life without the slightest semblance of a legitimate historian's objective tact.

"She [Frances Trollope] had a wide, toad-like face." (p. 21)
She actually looked like a warm, engaging, friendly person.

"[Harriet Martineau] once described herself as 'the happiest single woman in England,' perhaps an admission that something was missing." (p. 155)
So...the author apparently just read a primary source, probably written in Martineau's own hand that she was single...and HAPPY ABOUT IT, yet the author concludes later that since Martineau was (by her own choice) celibate that she must have been sexually repressed and probably autistic.
?!?!?!?????!!!!!!!

Oh. And my favorite:
"I look crap in shorts." (p. 245)

And the book mercifully concludes three pages later .

[Nicola Pierce · Rating 3 out of 5]

I had two problems with this book but, apart from those, I did enjoy it because I love reading biographies and I love American history.

At the very beginning, in her Author's Note, Wheeler declares that she finds the act of using first names in biographies to be "deplorable" - a strong word indeed and I could not fathom why she was appealing for my understanding in this regard, asking the reader how could she call a woman 'Fannie' when she has never met her. I mean what else would you call a woman - whose biography you are writing - whose name was Fannie?

Not meeting any of the six wonderful women in this book did not prevent Wheeler, however, from constantly referring to them as "my girls". These were six independent, pioneering women, in their middle age, who would probably have found it deplorable to be described as anyone's "my girl"!

I did not expect to meet Wheeler in this book but she intrudes on her narrative with her troubles about facing her fiftieth birthday. It seemed that she was putting herself on equal footing with her subjects and, at one stage, did actually write "the seven of us". The thing about it is, if you are presenting the warts and all stories about six women but only include your story up to a certain point you are going to wind up coming across as superficial and self-conscious. All the subjects ended up in America by way of grappling with the "second act" of their lives. Well, if Wheeler wanted to be part of "her girls" then she should have provided her first act along with the others.

I could not understand how neither the writer nor editor did not notice that moaning about a fiftieth birthday (especially when no context regarding her first forty-nine years is provided) would be made to look silly by the lives of the subjects who had had to face dangerous husbands, bury children and deal with the fantastic challenge of nineteenth century America. Her modern journey, scantily told, felt posed to me but maybe I was just in a bad mood over the author's note.

Nevertheless, I am glad I read the book because I did find the women mostly fascinating and I was grateful for the pointers to other books on the subjects. Furthermore I lapped up the overview of America's history.

All in all, the only thing that did not interest me was the author. She should either have jumped in with as much biography about herself, as about her subjects, or else have refrained from giving us anything at all.

[Jessica · Rating 2 out of 5]

I was SO looking forward to reading this book and it was SO disappointing. When the author is about to turn 50 she finds these English women who all spent the second half of their lives in America reinventing themselves. Each chapter is about one of the women and there is also a LOT of background about what was going on during that time period in US history. While some of the women's stories were interesting, overall the whole book felt disjointed and some of the chapters had a lot about the author's personal story/experience and then other chapters didn't. I had to make myself finish reading it. I rated it 2 stars rather than 3 because a few of the women were interesting and there were some interesting facts about America too, but overall I wouldn't recommend it.

[Lisa · Rating 2 out of 5]

I still love the concept of this book. Unfortunately, the author couldn't pull it off. Six independent women left England to rediscover themselves in pioneering USA in middle age and this author describes their experiences and even follows their travels herself using maps they would have had in the 19th C and current maps. How cool is that, obviously a good gift for me. But she wandered too far from topic to provide history and trivia from the time. Perhaps she didn't have enough material on her principals and needed fluff. Her own travels are not developed enough to work. They end up a distraction from her subjects rather than contributing to similarities and contrasts over time. Her very irritating references to "my girls" was too informal and personal. It grated on me each time she used the phrase.

[Pascale · Rating 3 out of 5]

A very pleasant read. Wheeler follows the fortunes of 4 women who were very famous in the day, and still mean something now: Fanny Trollope, Fanny Kemble, Harriet Martineau and Isabella Bird. For good measure she adds 2 unknown ones, homesteader Rebecca Burlend and Catherine Hubback, one of Jane Austen's nieces and herself the author of several turgid novels. Wheeler describes all these ladies with verve and empathy, without failing to make fun of their prejudices or idiosyncrasies. Having embarked on this project when she was in her late forties and dreading the fatal 50th birthday, she strains a bit to make all her narratives filed insights about what it means for a woman to reach 50. It is only loosely the case that her 6 heroines reinvented themselves around that age, but in the end it doesn't matter very much. Wheeler goes in for breathless digressions and the book is pack full of factoids sometimes totally unrelated to the fate of her principals. That too is a minor flaw, as I was thrilled to bits to discover that Sherwood Anderson died of swallowing the toothpick in his martini. You never know when you might be able to recycle that story at the dinner table! I wish she had made me hung-ho to reach 50 myself, but that would be too much to ask of any book, wouldn't it?

[Rebecca · Rating 4 out of 5]

A delightful, beautifully written composite of travel, memoir, social history and biography. While painting rich, sympathetic portraits of six very different women – whom she fondly terms “my girls” – Wheeler also documents the rapid changes of the latter half of the nineteenth century. Her six subjects are less role models than spirit guides, encouraging her – and readers – that personal reinvention is always possible, even as middle age approaches.

[Janice Griffin · Rating 1 out of 5]

only read the first two and a half chapters. poorly written and edited. it was as if the author published her research notes before organizing them. all additional members of my book club agreed.

[Amy · Rating 3 out of 5]

I really enjoyed this book, and the only reason it’s at three stars instead of four is that it took me a long time to get through.

Wheeler charts the second acts of six women who emigrated to America as it was building a national character for itself, from an early social commentator to an actress and abolitionist to a homesteader.

One of the things I loved about this book was the vivid descriptions of the time period and the places—particularly the wilderness of the Midwest. I also liked that Wheeler tells a fuller history than many in her place would: she doesn’t shy away from the atrocities committed against indigenous communities and she doesn’t spare the women she writes about from scrutiny, particularly on the subject of slavery.

I think it just took me a while to get through because I’m not an avid non-fiction reader and I fell in love with a few of these women more than others—getting to the end of their stories left little momentum to carry on to the next.

However I would absolutely recommend this to anyone who has an interest in American history and is down to be critical of it. You’ll learn a lot about the formation of America and be introduced to six interesting characters.

[Jamie · Rating 1 out of 5]

I really wanted to like this book. Wheeler tells the stories of 6 English women who come to America in their 40s and 50s to start over. For some this means beginning businesses, while for others it means homesteading on the frontier. As she tells their stories, Wheeler sets off on her own journey with two maps; her GPS and the maps that would have been available to each of the six women. She attempts to retrace their steps and see America as they would have seen it. Unfortunately, I found Wheeler's writing style to be hard to follow. Often she seems to chase tangents, such as a local photographer whose store is frequented by one of the women and gets a four-page story about his own marriage that ended in adultery and murder. A fascinating story, but really it had nothing to do with the subject of the chapter. All in all, this book was a difficult one for me to finish.

[Valerie Suwanseree · Rating 2 out of 5]

The stories were quite good and had lots of history and some interesting perspectives, but they were a little heavy on literary references for someone like me who isn't that familiar with British or even American literature. The switches between the stories and the author's experience in the USA were a little strange and I just felt the author was way too concerned about turning 50 or 50+ (personally, I've made it to 54 and I don't think it's that bad...)

[Russell James · Rating 5 out of 5]

Resolute British women travelling in - and exploring - America in the 19th century. The tremendous and at times startling stories of Fanny Trollope, Fanny Kemble, Harriet Martineau, Rebecca Burland, Isabella Bird and Catherine Hubback. Snippets of Wheeler's own life thrown in for added spice (though she was not a happy woman at the time, we glean). A tremendous read.

[Alyssa · Rating 3 out of 5]

3.5 stars if I could. A really interesting read, although sometimes the prose got a little too flowery for my taste. I appreciated the interruptions of the author's own experiences and travels, as it broke up the history very nicely, and I could feel the affection the author had for her subjects.

[Lyn Relph · Rating 3 out of 5]

I have to say that my final response to Sara Wheeler's writing is much like her response to Harriet Martineau's.

Wheeler travels the routes of six nineteenth-century British women into and across the U.S. in search of herself at midlife. At the end we leave her in the little mountain town of Mineral in the shadow of California's Mount Lassen, a volcano last active in 1917. So she shares some spirit with one of her "subjects," Isabella Bird, who in Colorado discovered something within herself almost exactly like the discovery John Muir made in California's mountains. Isabella found "the divine in nature."

The stories of the six intrepid women are fascinating. Wheeler did much solid research before hitting the trail. She shares with readers much new information about her six visitors and the state of things in mid-nineteenth-century America. For one example, she helps us picture the situation when Cincinnati was among the largest cities in the nation and Fanny Trollope built a pleasure house there.

But Ms Wheeler could well have left some of her baggage at home. Here she is responding to Fanny Trollope, the first of her six, comparing her to Alexis de Toqueville: "The difference between Toqueville and Fanny Trollope turns on this point. His was the more flexible mind; he was an intellectual, and in America experience informed his intellect. She was an empiricist, content to base broad judgements on a short spell of personal experience colored by her own shortcomings and prejudice" (p. 56). So Trollope's was the lesser mind, I suppose she's telling us, for what reason I cannot imagine. Trollope slogged through swamps, ate disgusting things at mealtimes and spent sleepless nights getting a firsthand look at this new place called The United States, and we're to think less of her because she hadn't the kind of mind Toqueville had? Once again, I suppose, dancing backwards in high heels isn't enough.

I have to admit a bias of my own: I bought the book primarily for Chapter 3, the travels of Harriet Martineau. Harriet was not only an abolitionist and woman's rights advocate, she was also an atheist, technically a Unitarian, daughter and sister of prominent Unitarian men. I thought she was way ahead of her time, and she offended American hosts by coming out against slavery in public while she was here.

Wheeler earlier told us that "An ill-favored spinster, Harriet was industrious, progressive and high-minded" (p. 78). Now, in Kentucky's Mammoth Cave, she seems to admire Harriet's spunk: "Harriet left her ear trumpet in her valise, tucked up her gown, tied a hanky over her head ('like the witches in Macbeth') and spent the day scrambling over loose limestone. The guides' candle cast monstrous shadows. 'Everything appears alive,' she wrote: 'the slowly growing stalactites, the water ever-dropping into the plashing pool, the whispering airs—all seem conscious'" (p. 138). But when it comes to Harriet's mind? "Many of Harriet's aphorisms are meaningless. She just couldn't stop herself coming out with them, like a sausage machine jammed to ON" (p. 144). Taken altogether, "Harriet's work no longer has much significance; she is worth remembering for her achievements in a man's world and for her personal commitment to winning through" (p. 144). Wheeler ranks Martineau as second-rate.

So of course I tend to rank Wheeler as second-rate because she couldn't get past Martineau's plainness, her deafness, her eccentricity, her atheism, her being cured of a chronic ailment by mesmerism, her taking up science and other liberal causes.

Wheeler returns home ready to tackle the second half of her life, but don't look for her out in public leading any charges. Her book reads well in many places — and it has some informative photos — but it ends up pretty flat and uninspiring.

[Susan Emmet · Rating 5 out of 5]

I seem to say this too often lately, but this is a wonderful book - an admixture of memoir, biography, travelogue, history and philosophical musings. I'd not read anything by Sara Wheeler and look forward to her other books.
But I'm glad this was my first. The idea of a "second act" in midlife is intriguing. And the cost of that second act - and its gains - for all six nineteenth century women Wheeler follows are solid. I like the semi-balance of loss and reward over years and the joy-amid-trial for all six women.
The first? Fanny Trollope - what a piece of work. Her "Domestic Manners of the Americans" sold well and infuriated many. Broke in England at 50, she decided to head to Cincinnati where she lived low and high. And wrote!
The second? Fanny Kemble, the famous British actress whose path crossed Trollope's, who landed married to a misogynist bully and lived on Silky Sea Island off the Georgia coast. Two kids later, she often threatened to leave her husband who threatened to keep the children from her. Eventually he did just that until they turned 21. Horrified at the conditions for slaves, Kemble's pleas and writing fell on mostly deaf ears, except for abolitionists. She returned to acting in later life a changed person.
And third? Harriet Martineau, who, according to Charles Dickens, was "grimly bent on the enlightenment of mankind." Deaf and sporting a huge ear trumpet, Harriet evidently charmed many despite her detractors' claims to the contrary. She traveled up and down the east coast and encountered many who feted her. A political economist, she also wrote (and self-published) widely and often, determined to mine every aspect of The American Character.
The fourth (my favorite) is Rebecca Berland who left England with her husband, five kids and 100 pounds in cash and set off for St. Louis to make a new life. How hard was that? Almost too hard. Her story best captures the truth: hard work will out.
Fifth is Isabella Bird, an invalid in England, who ventured to the American West and tripped the light fantastic all over the southwest. She lived with the hardscrabble folks, road horse back into danger, and lived to tell the tale. What a piece of work she was, interesting historically and psychologically.
Sixth is Catherine Hubback, one of Jane Austen's nieces. Her husband John suffered a complete and permanent mental breakdown, leaving her with three sons to raise. Once grown, she headed to California at just the time when railroads linked the coasts. With one son, she landed in San Francisco, then Oakland, and began to write vigorously about city life and her travels and observations about all the "nouns" she encountered. She met Eadweard Muybridge, one of the most influential and probably least known (now)photographers of the last two centuries. Hubback learned from him and from Thomas O'Sullivan, another photographer. Catherine left CA for VA to live with another son and there died at 58.
I shouldn't have gone on so in this review, but I was fascinated by the interweaving of history, herstories and Wheeler's musings. I think she successfully captured time and place and fact for each of the women and for the issues that preoccupied them and the burgeoning country in the nineteenth century.
I just think this is a "must read."

[Marianne Delwood · Rating 4 out of 5]

"O My America!" is a good read, but not an easy book to glide through. Nevertheless, it is well worth the effort for several reasons: an interesting view of American history from the viewpoint of English women visiting/living in the developing United States in the 19th century--somewhat akin to the BBC coming over to the US and reporting on various news stories, as they often do. The result is often learning some facets of our history that you may not have much acquaintance with, such as Louisa May Alcott's father's ideas about community living, more detail about the abolitionist movement and people's attitudes about it, and some very interesting insight about Americans' attitudes about their own country.

Some of the women experience downright hardship in their American experience, such as Fanny Trollope, the mother of Arthur, while Catherine Hubback, a niece of Jane Austen, receives the opportunity to escape from hardship and reinvent herself in San Francisco.

For each region that Wheeler describes in its 19th century attributes, she makes a point to give an update as it appears now. She does a great job of describing geographical attributes, and apparently has a history of giving such descriptions in her books about travel. I would quibble with how well the 21st century descriptions mesh with the women's stories that are told in the book. My other slight quibble is her finding reaching the age of 50 to be so difficult for women. It does exist, but it would be nice for not as much attention to be focused on this.

Overall, a great book!

[Sam Drew · Rating 4 out of 5]

An amazing mix of biography, social anthropology, history, and travelogue, 'O My America!: Second Acts in a New World' follows the lives of six women who visited America in the early part of the nineteenth century. All of the women were transformed by their travel experience (Sara Wheeler is well qualified for a sympathetic and objective description of this), and all of them transformed America in some way or another. All six of them were authors to a greater or lesser extent, and over the course of the book Sara Wheeler describes how their writings affected the British perception of America between Independence and the Civil War. The book pulls in the history of the postal service, the railways, telephones, and gives us an account of the country at a pivotal point in its history as well as a fascinating biographical insight into the lives of women who went there at that time.

I should add, as a little caveat, that I'm a bloke and I like beer and I loved this book. Although its subjects are women, it doesn't necessarily follow that its demographic is also women. It'll be of interest to anybody interested in American history, American literature, travel writing, or interesting biographies.

[Eleanor · Rating 3 out of 5]

Readable and deeply entertaining, with a plethora of historical detail thrown in. Indeed, that's sometimes the problem; Wheeler is frequently distracted by tangential musings. What she promises is the story of these six incredible women, and I wanted more of that and less devotion to William Faulkner, Flannery O'Connor, and the pioneering photographer Eadweard (yes really) Muybridge, interesting though they all are. Great fun, and well-written, but I never felt as though I got inside the heads of any of these women, with the possible exception of Rebecca Burlend, who is, for my money, the most impressive in this book, and (perhaps not coincidentally) the only one who didn't come from a background of privilege while in England. I know Isabella Bird scaled the Rockies and Harriet Martineau was an influential thinker, but I'm still more impressed by Burlend, taking in the harvest seven months pregnant and entirely alone because her husband lies ill and her children are too young to help her. That's what America was made of, dammit.

[Sarah Harkness · Rating 3 out of 5]

So this was good in parts, I think she writes well and it was an interesting concept, but I agree with the reviewer who thought it was poorly edited....some of the stories seemed patchy, disjointed. And I was particularly irritated in a surprisingly pedantic way by her throw away remark about Lily Bart, from The Custom of the Country, one of my favourite Edith Wharton novels. Wheeler writes that Wharton had given Lily a beard, in some strange transgender motif. Of course the beautiful heroine didn't have a beard, that was a silly misreading...but not of Wharton, I was sure, so I googled the suggestion, and found it had been lifted straight from an article by Jonathan Frantzen in The New Yorker....he writes that Wharton had 'saddled' Lily with a beard, but he is clearly referring to her surname, which means beard in German. If the author had read the article properly, or even better if she had read the novel, she wouldn't have made this mistake. It's not like me to get grumpy, but this was feeble....

[Gemma Alexander · Rating 4 out of 5]

Sara Wheeler is an English nonfiction travel writer. Wheeler’s blend of extensive historical research with personal experience reminded me of Bill Bryson, although her research seems to go deep where his is broad. When she was facing the age of female invisibility (50, for the males who may be reading) she stumbled upon the story of Fanny Trollope who boldly adventured in the American West with her three youngest children when Cincinnati was a frontier town. Her trip was a disaster, but resulted in a memoir that secured her fortune. Hoping, perhaps, for a similar self-reinvention, Wheeler followed the trails of five more Englishwomen whose literary leveraging of their American travels led to “second acts” in an era when any woman besides the queen was considered used up by thirty.

[Isabel · Rating 3 out of 5]

Sara Wheeler has shifted conventional genre boundaries with this book. Densely written, she has an incredible command of US history and the way people and events intersect and interact. I enjoyed meeting her six "girls" and seeing them in the context of larger history. The epilogue reaffirmed for me how deep my native California roots run; the girl can leave CA but CA never ever leaves the girl. I love the way she's written about a landscape that runs in my blood. Sara Wheeler has inspired my newest interview question: "if you could step into the life of an author for a year, which author would you choose?". Hands down, Sara Wheeler would be my answer.

[Ann · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book is an interesting but lengthy read about six women who traveled to America and what they discovered about themselves in their adventure. I especially enjoyed the section dedicated to Fanny Kemble who married a Southern gentleman and a Plantation owner and how she viewed the slaves and how she felt about abolition . This book is an enlightening look at earlier women who traveled and who were adventurous and spurs the reader on to a craving to get out and explore.
This book is not a fast read but worthwhile to read at one's leisure.

[Gerry Dee · Rating 3 out of 5]

- Read a review by Lyn Ralph and was intrigued. Love women who reinvent selves in middle years. Would love even more passionate passionately women who reinvented selves at 70. Book idea? Note: Mother Jones and Helen Hunt Jackson both reinvented themselves in mid-year and both told people they were older than their actual age. Why???

3/27/2014 - choppy writing. Loved the premise but not the execution. Lots of interesting historical info about women's lives during mid nineteenth century.

[Marc · Rating 2 out of 5]

Does Wheeler's interest in "second acts" stem from turning 50 or from having squandered the opportunities that fell her way post Terra Incognita: Travels in Antarctica? This book stings because it is a waste of time

[Rosemary]

I wass looking forward to this book but found it impossible to read. Te author threw her own travels in there willy billy. I got bored before reading 75 pages and will return it to the library tomorrow

[Becky · Rating 3 out of 5]

The short biographies of six British women who travel separately to America (during Victorian or civil war era) include their impressions of the U.S., American culture, slavery, etc. The author retraces their journeys, and I found her own experiences and impressions equally interesting.

[Deborah · Rating 4 out of 5]

I really enjoyed this book. It was like reading about a group of ladies that you would have loved to have been with.

[Shiloh · Rating 2 out of 5]

Not enough about the women. Too much stuff mentioned in passing with no depth.

[Wendy Lavery · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is an interesting and even inspiring book. Well written and enjoyable.

[Andrea]

Bas Bleu Bluestocking Book of the Month, November, 2016

[Ann · Rating 4 out of 5]

Good read but I wasn't crazy about the author inserting her personal narrative. Her connections weren't that vital to the impact of the women's stories.