Book - BookDetective

Name: Eight Women, Two Model Ts, and the American West

Author: Joanne Wilke
Year: 2007
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Genres/categories:
Travel, Non Fiction

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ISBNs:
9780803260191
0803260199

In 1924 eight young women drove across the American West in two Model T Fords. In nine weeks they traveled more than nine thousand unpaved miles on an extended car-camping trip through six national parks, "without a man or a gun along." It was the era of the flapper, but this book tells the story of a group of farm girls who met while attending Iowa's Teacher's College and who shared a "yen to see some things."

A blend of oral and written history, adventure, memoir, and just plain heartfelt living, Eight Women is a story of ordinary people doing extraordinary things. Weaving together a granddaughter's essays with family stories and anecdotes from the 1924 trip, the book portrays four generations of women extending from nineteenth-century Norway to present-day Iowa--and sets them loose across the western United States where the perils and practicalities of automotive travel reaffirm family connections while also celebrating individual freedom.