Nothing Daunted

NEW YORKER Executive Editor Dorothy Wickenden re-creates from rediscovered correspondence and her own investigation the tumultuous and enriching westward journey of her grandmother, Dorothy Woodruff, and her best friend, Rosamond Underwood. Both were Smith College graduates who in 1916 abandoned lives of luxury in Auburn, New York, to teach in Elkhead, Colorado, a desolate mountain settlement. Margaret Nichols's conversational delivery depicts what the friends referred to as the best year of their lives. Nichols's voice gets down to the raw core of life in the harsh West and ably interprets the women's enthusiastic interactions with their students. Her precise description of western development under President Woodrow Wilson alongside Wickenden's self-narrated prologue and epilogue makes this historical audio worth exploring. K.P. (c) AudioFile 2011, Portland, Maine