Ladies of the Canyons: (etc) ⭐️⭐️

Ladies of the Canyons: A League of Extraordinary Women and Their Adventures in the American Southwest by Lesley Poling-Kempes

G👀dreads About Summary

Ladies of the Canyons is the true story of remarkable women who left the security and comforts of genteel Victorian society and journeyed to the American Southwest in search of a wider view of themselves and their world.
Educated, restless, and inquisitive, Natalie Curtis, Carol Stanley, Alice Klauber, and Mary Cabot Wheelwright were plucky, intrepid women whose lives were transformed in the first decades of the twentieth century by the people and the landscape of the American Southwest. Part of an influential circle of women that included Louisa Wade Wetherill, Alice Corbin Henderson, Mabel Dodge Luhan, Mary Austin, and Willa Cather, these ladies imagined and created a new home territory, a new society, and a new identity for themselves and for the women who would follow them.

Their adventures were shared with the likes of Theodore Roosevelt and Robert Henri, Edgar Hewett and Charles Lummis, Chief Tawakwaptiwa of the Hopi, and Hostiin Klah of the Navajo. Their journeys took them to Monument Valley and Rainbow Bridge, into Canyon de Chelly, and across the high mesas of the Hopi, down through the Grand Canyon, and over the red desert of the Four Corners, to the pueblos along the Rio Grande and the villages in the mountains between Santa Fe and Taos.

Although their stories converge in the outback of the American Southwest, the saga of Ladies of the Canyons is also the tale of Boston’s Brahmins, the Greenwich Village avant-garde, the birth of American modern art, and Santa Fe’s art and literary colony.

Ladies of the Canyons is the story of New Women stepping boldly into the New World of inconspicuous success, ambitious failure, and the personal challenges experienced by women and men during the emergence of the Modern Age.

Genre: History, Nonfiction, Biography, Westerns

The How/Why: It's my book club's May Meeting BotM. 

Surprisingly it does not hold the Guinness World Record for the longest book title! 

⭐⭐

🎉 Overall Storytelling? 🎉🎉 Appears to be well researched

🎣 Did it grab and keep my attention? ➖🎣not at all

🗣️Would I recommend it to anyone?  No ➖

🕮 Would I want a sequel? No ➖

📚 Would I want to read more books by this author? No ➖

💣💥 📢 Content Warnings? None

🌶 Spice? No

🌪 Plot Twist? No

👟 Pace? Slower than molasses in the winter as my grandfather used to say

💻 Tidbits ~ 

I don’t typically feel the need to finish a book just because it’s my book club’s BotM. I did however struggle through this one because it’s about the American Southwest and I live in Arizona.

It appears to be well researched history about the women who molded the Santa Fe art scene. While acknowledging the important history, I felt like I was watching cactus grow* on a slow climb up Bandelier National Monument. 

Carol Bishop Stanley founded the Ghost Ranch which became the home of Georgia O'Keeffe. It's approximately 65 miles northwest of Santa Fe. 

Alice Ellen Klauber was a painter who helped link the Santa Fee art culture to the New York Art world. 

Mary Cabot Wheelwright was an anthropologist and founder of the Wheelwright Museum of American Indians in Sante Fe. 

Personal note: I love Santa Fe and have vacationed there a few times. I would encourage you to go experience the history in person. 
You can take a tour of Georgia O’Keeffe’s house but make sure you get tickets in advance.

*Extra Tidbit: Fun Fact. Succulents grow about 1" per year. Saguaros cactus take 10 years to grow 1 to 1.5 inches. 

It has almost 4⭐️ review average, so once again not all books are for everyone. 

🎧 Narrator: Jo Ann Perrin - reads to you, doesn't bring the story to life.

🎧11.06 hours 🕮 383 pages

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