"Katie Bowen was literate, observant, curious, compassionate, lucid, and philosophical. Her letters are informative, affectionate, and delightful to read. These letters constitute one of the finest pre-Civil War collections about military life." Dr. Leo E. Oliva, Santa Fe Trail Historian. Catherine "Katie" Bowen (nee Cary) was born and raised in Houlton, Maine, where her family ran a lumber and mercantile business. After a whirlwind courtship, Katie married a dashing young West Point graduate, Second Lieutenant Isaac Bowen, who left soon after the wedding for the Mexican War. When he returned safely from the war, Katie and Isaac embarked on the adventure of a lifetime: enjoying tea and discussing philosophy with Ralph Waldo Emerson; drinking a soldier's cracker toddy and smoking cigars with General Zachary Taylor, Colonel Jefferson Davis, and Second Lieutenant Ulysses S. Grant, one of Isaac's West Point classmates; chatting fireside with Susan Shelby Magoffin, another well-known Santa Fe Trail traveler; sipping champagne at the White House with family friend, President Millard Fillmore; hearing crucial military intelligence from frontier scout, Kit Carson; and, being entertained with tall tales about Mississippi River life by steamboat Cub Pilot, Samuel Langhorne Clemens, later known as Mark Twain. The Bowen Love Letters reveal intimate details about young lives full of passion and adventure - lives that ended tragically in 1858 when Katie and Isaac were still in their early thirties. About the Author Susan Lee Ward's father served in the U.S. Army for thirty-two years. Her mother worked with the American Red Cross in New Zealand during WWII and as a librarian at various military posts. Susan spent her formative years at Fort Bliss in El Paso, Texas, where she became familiar with the sight of canvas tents, the sound of 21-gun salutes, and the smell of saddle soap. She currently lives in Austin, Texas, with her husband, William Seaton Ward. Katie Bowen was literate, observant, curious, compassionate, lucid, and philosophical. Her letters are informative, affectionate, and delightful to read. These letters constitute one of the finest pre-Civil War collections about military life." Dr. Leo E. Oliva, Santa Fe Trail Historian Featured in Kansas History. Serialized in Wagon Tracks, the journal of the Santa Fe Trail Association. These letters found me, I didn't find them. It started with a single photocopied article discovered in a relocating family member's belongings in the late 1990s. A fragment of a story about a soldier named Isaac Bowen and his wife Katie, who had traveled the Santa Fe Trail together in the 1840s and 1850s, writing to each other across a continent of frontier, war, and distance. I spent twenty years verifying every detail. The proper spelling of every name and place. The methods of transportation. The ingredients in the cooking and the medicinal recipes. The public events and private griefs. I grew up at Fort Bliss, the daughter of a mother who served with the American Red Cross in New Zealand during WWII and worked as a military post librarian, so I understood, perhaps better than most, what it meant to keep a family together across distance and duty. What you hold in Lifelines: The Bowen Love Letters is not my story. It is Katie and Isaac's  told entirely in their own words, exactly as they wrote them. My only job was to make sure those words finally reached the readers who were always meant to find them. Susan Lee Ward.. Seven hundred letters. Twelve years. One extraordinary American marriage. Katie and Isaac Bowen traveled the Santa Fe Trail in the 1840s and 1850s, writing to each other across wars, territories, and twelve years of marriage. Their letters place readers at the center of American history with uncommon intimacy drinking a cracker toddy by campfire with General Zachary Taylor, Colonel Jefferson Davis, and a young Ulysses S. Grant. Sipping champagne at the White House with President Millard Fillmore. Trading stories on a steamboat with a young Samuel Langhorne Clemens. Receiving frontier intelligence directly from Kit Carson. Discussing philosophy over tea with Ralph Waldo Emerson. Through it all, the Mexican-American War, a comminuted fracture at Fort Union with no x-rays and a Pueblo woman for a nurse, the birth of the first child at Fort Union in New Mexico Territory wind and dust, Katie and Isaac write to each other. Informative, affectionate, and delightful to read. "Katie Bowen was literate, observant, curious, compassionate, lucid, and philosophical. These letters constitute one of the finest pre-Civil War collections about military life." Dr. Leo E. Oliva, Santa Fe Trail Historian Featured in Kansas History. Serialized in Wagon Tracks, the journal of the Santa Fe Trail Association. Susan Lee Ward is the editor of Lifelines: The Bowen Love Letters seven hundred letters spanning twelve years of a real American frontier marriage, authenticated over two decades of me