Sarah A. Bowman

Sarah A. Bowman, widely known as the Great Western, was an innkeeper, restaurateur and camp follower who accompanied United States forces during the Mexican-American War. She became celebrated as the Heroine of Fort Brown for assisting soldiers under bombardment and later operated businesses in frontier settlements in Texas and Arizona. Her imposing public image became part of western legend.

Lucia St. Clair Robson’s Fearless makes Bowman its central figure and uses her movement with Zachary Taylor’s army to explore the labour performed by women around military camps. The novel also confronts the narrow categories imposed on frontier women, whose work could include nursing, cooking, trade, hospitality and sex work. The documentary record is incomplete, leaving room for fiction but also requiring care with later embellishment.