Grace and Grit

From 1910-1916, women such as Blanche Stuart Scott, Della Crewe, Effie and Avis

Hotchkiss, Adeline and Augusta Van Buren, Rachel Foster Avery and other daring

adventurers were not deterred from pursuing and achieving their dreams of traveling

across America and exploring the world around them in spite of daunting physical and

social road blocks.

By car, plane, and motorcycles they did what few others dared, and accomplished feats

worthy of story telling a century later. In a world very different from our paved and

pampered world today, large portions of the planet were still unexplored and even the

settled places were predominantly rural and undeveloped. Explorers still made headlines

by going where no person had ever gone before. It was an especially remarkable period

of history for those women whose stories are told in this book; young women who held the

dream, fortified their courage, endured pain, lost hope, found hope and met their goals.

Being the first to accomplish an exploratory feat was difficult enough for men who enjoyed

the support of society at large, but for these women the feat was tougher, longer, harder,

but history making.

This book is the first to tell the stories of several of these women in the detail and context

necessary to truly appreciate their deeds. Considering their accomplishments within the

realities and conditions of an early twentieth-century America-the great frontier period - we

marvel at the human spirit's irrepressible force to explore, create, and push back boundaries

that limit the human experience. Hats off to these women's grace and true grit.