The women who traveled west in covered wagons during the 1840s speak through these letters and diaries. Here are the voices of Tamsen Donner and young Virginia Reed, members of the ill-fated Donner party; Patty Sessions, the Mormon midwife who delivered five babies on the trail between Omaha and Salt Lake City; Rachel Fisher, who buried both her husband and her little girl before reaching Oregon. Still others make themselves heard, starting out from...

Introduction to the Bison Books edition by Anne M. Butler. Originally published: Glendale, Calif., A.H. Clark Co., 1983. "Reprinted from volume one...of the original eleven-volume edition". Volume 2 introduction by Lillian Schlissel.