Dorothy Wickenden, executive editor at The New Yorker and author of “Nothing Daunted: The Unexpected Education of Two Society Girls in the West” (Simon & Schuster, April 2012), will speak about her book on Sunday, May 6, 2012, at the annual meeting of The Friends of the White Plains Public Library. The meeting will take place from 2 to 4 p.m. and is open to the public.
In the summer of 1916, Dorothy Woodruff and Rosamond Underwood, bored by society luncheons, charity work, and the effete men who courted them, left their families in Auburn, New York, to teach school in the wilds of northwestern Colorado. They lived with a family of homesteaders in the Elkhead Mountains and rode to school on horseback, often in blinding blizzards. Their students walked or skied, in tattered clothes and shoes tied together with string. The young cattle rancher who had lured them west, Ferry Carpenter, had promised them the adventure of a lifetime. He hadn’t let on that they would be considered dazzling prospective brides for the locals.
Nearly a hundred years later, Dorothy Wickenden, the granddaughter of Dorothy Woodruff, found the teachers’ buoyant letters home, which captured the voices of the pioneer women, the children, and other unforgettable people the women got to know. In reconstructing their journey, Wickenden has created an exhilarating saga about two intrepid women and the “settling up” of the West.
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The meeting is free and refreshments will be served. White Plains Library is located at 100 Martine Avenue, White Plains. For more information, visit whiteplainslibrary.org or call 422-1480. (No tickets needed.)
