Harriet Backus writes about her life as an assayer's wife and true pioneer of the West with heart-felt emotion and vivid detail. Sharing her amusing and often challenging experiences as a new bride in the high San Juan Mountains where the Tomboy Mine operated above Telluride, Colorado, she paints a poignant picture of the people, and the life centered around silver mining where most of the book takes place. It is a skillfully written account from a women's perspective in a rough and tumble mining town that has made this book a classic for women's studies.  Harriet's life followed her husband George's career which took them many places beyond the San Juan Mountains including the rugged coast of British Columbia, and the mountainous mining town of Elk City, Idaho and back to Colorado's Leadville. Although both Hattie and George were from the San Francisco bay area where they eventually retired, her heart never quite left the rugged mountain trails of the high San Juans of Colorado.   Is a woman's named Hattie's personal account of life in the mining camps of the American West, beginning with her marriage to George and concluding in 1964 when George died, literally in her arms. Tomboy Bride is divided into four parts: The San Juans; Britannia Beach; The Heart of Idaho; and Leadville, City in the Clouds. Tomboy Bride is an engaging from the very start, reading more like a novel than a biography. Tomboy Bride is highly recommended for women's studies and American West reading lists! -- Midwest Book Review "I've often had a fantasy that one day, while cleaning out the barn or digging in the garden, I might uncover a diary or a pack of letters, some written message left from the past that neither time nor weather nor pack rats have carried away. Then I would learn what life was like for the woman who lived on this land a hundred years before me, a woman who was the wife of a rancher or a miner, somebody who believed a good life and untold riches were to be found in this valley tucked under the Continental Divide. Discovering Tomboy Bride was like finding that diary." Pam Houston, from the foreword Harriet Fish grew up in the San Francisco bay area, and taught school until the San Francisco earthquake of 1906 closed the schools. She then worked for the Telegraph Company for two years. Her sweetheart of high school days, George Backus, a graduate of the University of California School of Mines, found work as an assayer in Telluride, Colorado. Against her family’s wishes, she traveled to Denver since her fiancee could not return to California for the wedding. Hattie, as she was called remained happily at her husband's side his entire life although she was fearlessly independent and strong on her own. While George was introverted and competent, Hattie Fish Backus overshadowed him as an extroverted, smart, controlling, opinionated and very devoted wife. She wrote Tomboy Bride in the early 1940s, but it was repeatedly rejected by publishers. Being independent and ahead of her time, she self-published the book. In 1977, Pruett Publishing of Boulder, Colorado took over publication, and over 75,000 copies of the book have been sold since that time. When you live, as I do, at 9,000 feet in southwestern Colorado just outside what once was once of the world's most famous mining towns, history is all around you. . . . I've often had a fantasy that one day, while cleaning out the barn or digging in the garden, I might uncover a diary or a pack of letters, some unwritten message left from the past that neither time nor weather nor pack rats have carried away. Then I would learn what li6e was like for the woman who lived on this land a hundred years before me, a woman who was the wife of a rancher or a miner, somebody who believed a good life and untold riches, were to be found in this valley tucked under the Continental Divide. Discovering Tomboy Bride was like finding that diary. And though Harriet Fish Backus lived with her husband two valleys to the west of where I make my home (about 35 miles away as the crow flies, about 200 miles by the paved road), we share the magic of the high San Juan Mountains-in my biased opinion, the grandest and most awe inspiring mountains in all the Lower Forty-eight.-Pam Houston Used Book in Good Condition