Description:
This is the biography of Kate M. Cleary, a 19th century Nebraska writer whose sketches, short stories, essays, and poetry concentrated on the experiences of pioneer women, including a selection of her writings. Treats Cleary in relation to the growth of a small town, ideas of women's duties and rights, the issues of birth control, childbirth, and drug addiction.
Susanne K. George is a professor of English at the University of Nebraska at Kearney. She is the author of The Adventures of The Woman Homesteader: The Life and Letters of Elinore Pruitt Stewart, also available in a Bison Books edition.
Review Quotes: "Fascinating ... Kate M. Cleary shows the disillusionment of the female artist as she carefully chronicles her personal life, her birthing pain, her misunderstood creative endeavors, and her loss of husband and children. As readers, we empathize with Kate M. Cleary's nineteenth-century world. Her sketches, short stories, essays, and poetry focus on more than the female pioneer; rather, they depict frontier life on the plains". -- Nebraska History