Branding Iron

A Wyoming woman refuses to be cattle-branded by life. When Joan Carver leaves her father's ranch for the city's bright lights, she trades one kind of wilderness for another - and neither is kind to a woman alone. Men see her as property, as prey, as a problem to be solved. She sees herself as something else entirely: her own. Katharine Newlin Burt's 1912 novel pulses with grit and defiance, following one woman's violent, determined climb from poverty to self-possession. Each turn brings danger, each setback sharpens her will. This is frontier feminism before the word existed - a story of a woman who refuses to be branded by anyone else's hand.