OUR WOMEN COULD SHOOT

My nonfiction book, Our Women Could Shoot, is about a young woman's eyewitness account of her journey to California by covered wagon in 1846. It features brave women who helped blaze the trail to California, includes quotations from another woman s adventure never published in book form and reveals the equality of women with firearms. The story describes meeting the women of the Donner Party on the trail, a visit to a Pawnee village, and an encounter with an all-male Pawnee war party. The narrative text follows five-year-old Josephine Harbin s journey across the plains, over the Rocky Mountains, through the Nevada Desert, and finally crossing the pass to California. The story includes the intrigue of American attempts to wrestle California away from Mexico, in which the Harbin family played a role, and the fortune her brother made in the gold rush while touching on the spoiling of paradise, all from a young woman s prospective. In her lifetime Josephine was a scholar, wrote papers, and gave lectures on the history of women pioneers. Her granddaughter revealed even more facts about Josephine s extraordinary life and family to me, as I am Josephine s great-great grandson. I have traveled the Oregon Trail by car, backpacked in the Emigrant s Wilderness of California, and I enjoy skiing at the modern resorts located at the site of Donner Pass.