For readers of Larry McMurtryтАЩs Lonesome Dove, Elizabeth GilbertтАЩs The Signature of All Things,┬аand Hope JahrenтАЩs Lab Girl, Diane SmithтАЩs 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
тАЬI loved this book in a way that I havenтАЩt loved a book in some time.тАЭ тАФJames Welch, author of Fools Crow
In the spring of 1898, A. E. (Alexandria) BartramтАФa spirited young woman with a love for botanyтАФis invited to join a field study in Yellowstone National Park. The studyтАЩs 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 YellowstoneтАЩs 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 AmericaтАЩs majestic natural beauty, as well as a thoughtful reflection on environmentalism, Native American displacement, and feminism at the dawn of a new century.