Local Women

היא עדיין רווקה בת 30, כפי שהיתה לפני עשרים שנה בדיוק. היא עדיין גרה בבאר שבע וכותבת במקומון, עונדת עגילי פלסטיק זולים, מדשדשת ברגליה הגדולות מזירת פשע אחת לאחרת, מסתבכת בתעלומות בלשיות שאיש לא הטיל עליה לחקור. מתחת לחזותה הגמלונית והאטומה-לכאורה מסתתר מוח חד וחריף, שממשיך להפתיע את עמיתיה ויריביה. ואחרי ששת רבי-המכר שכתבה עליה שולמית לפיד - אין ספק שליזי בדיחי היא האנטי-גיבורה הכובשת ביותר בספרות הבלש העברית.

Popular culture has taught us to picture the Old West as a land of men, whether it's the lone hero on horseback or crowds of card players in a rough-and-tumble saloon. But the taming of the frontier involved plenty of women, too - and this book tells their stories. At first, female pioneers were indeed rare - when the town of Denver was founded in 1859, there were only five women among a population of almost a thousand. But the adventurers arrived, slowly but surely.

Back in the fall of 2016, before casting her vote for Hillary Clinton, Adrienne Martini, a knitter, a runner, a mom, and a resident of rural Otsego County in snowy upstate New York, knew who her senators were, wasn’t too sure who her Congressman was, and had only vague inklings about who her state reps were. And after the 2017 presidential inauguration, she reached out to Dave, a friend of a friend, who was involved in the Otsego County Democratic Party. Maybe she could help out with phone calls or fundraising? But Dave’s idea was: she should run for office. Someone had to do it.

It is hard not to fall in love with fashion plate Mary Christiana Hettler who gives up the high society of Chicago to ultimately move to rural Nevada, one of the bleakest sites in the nation to serve as an Episcopal Deaconess. Upon landing in the mining town, known primarily as a murder capital during int heyday, Mary Christiana doesn't give an inch. She transforms a dusty, dingy "icebox" of a house into one that becomes the heart of the Episcopal community with hot pink rooms, exotic flowers and a rolling, grassy yard.

Women didn’t always have the rights and the possibilities that they do today. In the past, the basic human rights such as the right to vote, the right to reproduce, the right to work, to hold public office, to enter into legal contracts, to have equal rights in family law, the right to education, the right to be free from sexual violence, the right to own property, and so on were not available to women.