Letters from Yellowstone: A Novel

ISBN: 0140291814

Author: Smith, Diane

Condition: New

For readers of Larry McMurtrys Lonesome Dove, Elizabeth Gilberts The Signature of All Things, and Hope Jahrens Lab Girl, Diane Smiths 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 centuryI loved this book in a way that I havent loved a book in some time. -James Welch, author of Fools CrowIn the spring of 1898, A. E. (Alexandria) Bartram-a spirited young woman with a love for botany-is invited to join a field study in Yellowstone National Park. The studys 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 Yellowstones 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 Americas majestic natural beauty, as well as a thoughtful reflection on environmentalism, Native American displacement, and feminism at the dawn of a new century.