Long hailed as the land of opportunity, 19th-century America gave enterprising middle-aged women a chance to prove or reinvent themselves; here the author of Too Close to the Sun profiles six inspiring ladies who made the leap, including Fanny Trollope, whose scathing Domestic Manners of the Americans earned her notoriety on both sides of the Atlantic. Using vintage maps to trace a path nationwide from Savannah to San Francisco, Sara Wheeler also literally follows the stories of actress and abolitionist Fanny Kemble, radical sociologist Harriet Martineau, homesteader Rebecca Burlend, traveler Isabella Bird, and novelist Catherine Hubback.

"Funny and feisty.... Hugely pleasurable."—The Independent (UK)