An ardent early suffragette, Edna Brush Perkins set out in 1920 with her friend, Charlotte Hannahs Jordan, to journey into the Mojave, both women seeking to escape civilization and their struggle to secure voting rights for women. The Mojave at that time was considered to be a desolate, inaccessible region—part of the fading American frontier. Originally published in 1922, is Perkins' account of this journey. Perkins' evocative writing describes the landscape and the people she encounters. As editor Peter Wild writes, this is ultimately the story of two wealthy women who enter Death Valley "as a sort of middle-aged lark" and "emerge from the trip profoundly changed." Edna Brush Perkins (1880-1930), author of , was deeply involved in women's causes and related issues of social reform. She traveled widely, climbed the Jungfrau, painted, and promoted the arts. Peter Wild, a professor of English at the University of Arizona, is one of the foremost poets of the American West.