The Female Frontier: A Comparative View of Women on the Prairie and the PlainsThis book introduces the important concept of a female frontier a frontier "every bit as real and coherent, as, for example, the mining frontier." It gives us a new understanding of western women's shared experiences and of the full implications of their participation in America's westward movement. Riley has reconstructed women's roles and concerns from census data, legal proceedings, newspaper accounts, local histories, essays, sermons, novels,