The Queen of Heartbreak Trail: The Life and Times of Harriet Smith Pullen, Pioneering Woman

Brackbill (An Uncommon Cape) digs into the life of her great-grandmother, Harriet Smith Pullen, who earned the moniker "Mother of the North" during the late 19th-century Klondike Gold Rush. Pullen had risen from hardscrabble Washington homesteader to briefly but notably become the multi-talented lady of a servant-filled mansion, and her life story features frontier hospitality, expert horse management, entrepreneurial instinct, and a touch of appropriated Native American exoticism. Her life inspired tales that appeared in contemporary national newspaper accounts, local legends, and Pullen's father's invaluable diaries. These diaries portrayed a man with the paradoxical needs to both own land and migrate, a pattern his resourceful daughter repeatedly followed even as a single mother. Brackbill delves into her family's resources to find the truth behind Pullen's mesmerizing adventures, using numerous family photos and her own stories (including of the gold earrings that belonged to both subject and author) to further flesh out Pullen's legacy. So much of the story stems from diaries, short biographies of Pullen's children, and Brackbill's genealogical discoveries that this is really an account of a fascinating, adventurous pioneering family who actively participated in the transformation of the Pacific Northwest and Alaskan frontiers. (Apr.)