Forgotten Female Felons

by Sherry Skye Stuart

The Colorado Territorial Prison was built in Cañon City in 1871. One year later, the first female felon was found guilty of poisoning her husband with strychnine and was sentenced to life imprisonment.
These women from our collective past faced many of the same challenges that contemporary women confront today. Issues such as female sexuality, abortion access, pregnancy and childbirth, domestic violence, addiction and economic instability remain as relevant now as they were then.

Using original prison intake sheets and other historical documents, award-winning author Sherry Skye Stuart skillfully tells these forgotten female felon’s imagined stories and restores their dignity as women, weaving their accounts with compassion, truth and imagination.

Delve into Catherine’s tale, a renowned midwife sent to prison for committing abortion.
Weep at May’s and Lizzie D.’s tragic stories of abuse and addiction.
Delight when Gertie's typewriter becomes the vehicle for telling her story sixty years later.
Chuckle when Bertha’s granny decides to use her fancy dresses to make a crazy quilt.
Explore the inner workings of the prison Female Department through the writings of two Matrons - Catherine and Susan.

Based on facts and entwined with elements of culture and human nature, these historical fiction stories cast light on an overlooked thread in the tapestry of the American West. Their lives are equally as real and important as the cowboys and outlaws, soldiers and explorers.

2025 Oklahoma Writers Federation Inc. 3rd place Unpublished Historical Fiction Book “Forgotten Female Felons.”
2025 Oklahoma Writers Federation Inc. 1st Honorable Mention Short Story – Western “Catherine.”
2023 Women Writing the West 3rd place LAURA Short Fiction "Mayfield."

318 pages, Kindle Edition

Published June 22, 2025

Reviews

[Jane Botkin · Rating 5 out of 5]

I loved this book! Sherry Skye Stuart combined my favorite type of story-telling—biography, western history, and a little mystery—into creative, individual narratives of an unlikely set of women. Biographical sketches of incarcerated women of all ages, indicted for a miscellany of crimes, have been enhanced with creative, first-person narratives. After the first woman speaks from the pages of Forgotten Female Felons, the reader is hooked. Keep in mind, Stuart researched beyond what historic prisoner forms from Cañon City's Colorado Territorial Prison originally contributed. Stuart was able to glean the smallest of factual details from elsewhere and piece them together while searching for the "whys." In one particular vignette, Stuart imagines the ghostly presence of a felon, her eyes begging for her story to be written. Was Stuart being honest about her paranormal experience while writing this narrative, or does the author's imaginative description buttress her purpose for writing this book? Because this is exactly what Sherry Skye Stuart accomplishes. She provides voices for a group of forgotten women, held in a dark 19th century prison for crimes of necessity, passion, and love. For female readers, especially, portions of the incarcerated women's stories resonate with their shared dilemmas, sorrow, and regret.