Roxanna Britton: A Biographical Novel

Roxanna Britton: daughter, wife, mother, grandmother. Real person. This is the story of how the American West was won, told through the eyes of one strong, independent woman.

In this gripping novel, Shirley S. Allen recreates the life of her own great-grandmother, born in the Western Reserve, Ohio, in 1833. The places, dates, events and major characters are all true, taken from family records and legal documents.

The novel begins when Roxanna is a young widow faces the choice between putting her two baby girls in an orphanage or agreeing to a loveless marriage.

In her struggle to survive, Roxanna breaks through traditional barriers to women's independence by finding a husband of her own choice, developing her own small business and in 1865, becoming one the first married women to own property. We follow her through the hard times of the Civil War to the post war boom in Chicago and the Great Fire of 1871, and eventually to a homestead in Nebraska where, as a widow, she establishes her claim. She then must follow her married daughter to California to save her from an abusive husband.

Roxanna's story is not only of its heroine, but of the age in which she lived.