For readers of Larry McMurtryâs Lonesome Dove, Elizabeth Gilbertâs The Signature of All Things, and Hope Jahrenâs Lab Girl, Diane Smithâs warmhearted and award-winning epistolary novel about a spunky young woman who joins a makeshift field study in Yellowstone National Park at the end of the nineteenth century
âI loved this book in a way that I havenât loved a book in some time.â âJames Welch, author of Fools Crow
In the spring of 1898, A. E. (Alexandria) Bartramâa spirited young woman with a love for botanyâis invited to join a field study in Yellowstone National Park. The studyâs leader, a mild-mannered professor from Montana, assumes she is a man, and is less than pleased to discover the truth. Once the scientists overcome the shock of having a woman on their team, they forge ahead on a summer of adventure, forming an enlightening web of relationships as they move from Mammoth Hot Springs to a camp high in the backcountry. But as they make their way collecting amid Yellowstoneâs beauty, the group is splintered by differing views on science, nature, and economics.
Brimming with humor, excitement, and the romance of the Yellowstone landscape, Letters from Yellowstone is a love letter to the joys of scientific discovery and Americaâs majestic natural beauty, as well as a thoughtful reflection on environmentalism, Native American displacement, and feminism at the dawn of a new century.