Description: An Ordinary Woman is an epic journey, a tale of high courage in the face of harrowing danger and privation. Nancy Kelsey and her husband were members of the first small group of Americans to attempt the overland route to California, and Nancy was the only woman to complete the trek. In 1841 she walked over the Rocky Mountains, across the Great Western Desert, and over the Sierra Nevada, all with a baby in her arms. Nancy's arrival electrified the Californio Dons, for they knew it meant that Americans had found a way across the barrier of the Sierras, and planned to settle in what had been their golden kingdom. She worked at Sutter's Fort on the American River, and she rode in the Rebellion that wrested California from Mexico, under the famous Bear Flag -- a flag made from her petticoats.

Best-selling historical novelist Cecelia Holland has done a biographer's work for this book -- sought out the government archives, the journals and newspapers, the personal memoirs and private letters of Nancy Kelsey herself, the people who traveled with her, and her descendents. This is a true story, told exactly as it happened, with Holland's powerful, dramatic prose to set the scene and reveal the heart of this courageous American pioneer

Nancy's life represents a story too seldom told -- that of the ordinary American woman who faced peril and hardship calmly; who fed and clothed her family, raised her children, and created a nation that spanned a continent.

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