Letters from Yellowstone - Paperback

by Diane Smith (Author)

For readers of Larry McMurtry's Lonesome Dove, Elizabeth Gilbert's The Signature of All Things, and Hope Jahren's Lab Girl, Diane Smith's 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

Back Jacket

IN STUNNING TURN-OF-THE-CENTURY YELLOWSTONE, A YOUNG WOMAN EXPERIENCES THE JOYS OF THE WILDERNESS AND THE PASSION OF DISCOVERY

In the spring of 1898, A. E. (Alexandria) Bartram -- a feisty young woman with a love for botany -- is invited to join a field study in Yellowstone National Park. Its leader, a mild-mannered professor from Montana, mistakenly 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 Yellowstone's pristine beauty -- threatened even a century ago by misguided tourism -- the group is splintered by differing views on science, nature, and economics.

This delightful epistolary novel captures an ever-fascinating era and charts one woman's dramatic journey to a greater understanding of herself and her place in the world.

Author Biography

Diane Smith studied western and environmental history at the University of Montana, and has lived in Montana for most of her life. Her first novel, Letters from Yellowstone, was the winner of the Pacific Northwest Booksellers Association Fiction Prize and was nominated in the fiction category for the Mountains and Plains Booksellers Book Awards.