Mollie: The Journal of Mollie Dorsey Sanford in Nebraska and Colorado Territories, 1857-1866

Mollie is a vivid, high-spirited, and intensely feminine account of city people homesteading in the raw, new land west of the Missouri. More particularly, it is the story of Mollie herself—just turned eighteen when the Dorseys left Indianapolis for Nebraska Territory—of her reaction to the transplanting and such vicissitudes as rattlesnakes, blizzards, Indians, and the hardships of pioneer life.

After her marriage to Byron Sanford, a romantic young blacksmith from New York State,…