She's Gone Santa Fe

In this historical novel set in the early 1920s, the dream of a young Brooklyn Jewish woman named Ree is to live with the Indians of the Southwest, far from the sweatshop where she works. To reach that goal, she studies anthropology at Columbia University, where the professor she idolizes, Ruth Benedict, is having an affair with her fellow student, Margaret Mead. When her professors think Ree is a loose cannon and won't send her to the Southwest for her field work, she defiantly goes to New Mexico on her own. But before she reaches Navajoland, Ree works at a lesbian dude ranch that really existed; works for Boston heiress Mary Cabot Wheelwright to study Navajo culture from Hosteen Klah, a transgender medicine man; finds romance on a starlit mesa top with an elusive Navajo youth; travels in a sheepherder's cozy wagon; and tries to find her place at a trading post in a remote Navajo community. She's Gone Santa Fe tells a unique story based on real people and places of New Mexico, lesbian, and anthropology history.