State Museum to host Bretzlaff Foundation Program

By Bob Nylen

Bretzlaff Foundation Program on Women's West Sept. 28 at Governor's Mansion

Curator of history, Nevada State Museum

On Thursday, the Nevada State Museum will host the second annual Bretzlaff Foundation Program, featuring three women authors on the topic "Women Writing the West."

The program will feature an informal discussion by authors JoAnn Levy, Cathy Luchetti and Harriet Rochlin, who will reveal their views of the women's West, why they were attracted to this area of study, and what their particular interest has meant to them. The event will be held from 7-9 p.m. on Thursday at the Governor's Mansion in Carson City. The program is free to the public.

Cathy Luchetti has earned national awards for three of her five popular women's histories: "Women of the West", "Home on the Range: A Culinary History of the American West" and most recently "Medicine Women: The Story of Early American Women Doctors." Two other books, "Under God's Spell: Frontier Evangelists" and "I Do!: Courtship, Love and Marriage in the American West" confirms the talent, energy and dedication of this prolific author.

Harriett Rochlin is the author of the social history, "Pioneer Jews: A New Life in the Far West" (in print from Houghton Mifflin for 16 years), and two novels, "The Reformer's Apprentice" is the story of a young Jewish woman in late 19th-century San Francisco, and "First Lady of Dos Cachuates" continues the story in frontier Arizona. As Publishers Weekly observed, "Rochlin serves up enough period charm, crackling storytelling, and priceless details to satisfy devotees of both wild west lore and Jewish history."

JoAnn Levy wrote the now-classic "They Saw the Elephant: Women in the California Gold Rush," acclaimed by the San Francisco Chronicle as "one of the best and most comprehensive accounts of gold rush life to date."

Her first novel, "Daughter of Joy," inspired by the life of the famed Chinese courtesan Ah Toy, won the 1999 Willa Cather Award for the Best Historical Fiction. "For California's Gold," new this year from the University Press of Colorado, was lavishly praised by famed gold-rush historian J. S. Holliday and by State Librarian Kevin Starr for its historical accuracy and its unforgettable story of courage and tragedy.

The Museum Store will sell some of these books at the event and the authors will be available to sign them. This program is held in conjunction with the Great Basin Book Festival in Reno and is co-sponsored by the Nevada Humanities Committee and the Nevada State Museum. Please contact the Nevada State Museum History Department if you are interested in attending, at (775) 687-4810, extension 242.