ROWENA

Sharp’s biography charts the remarkable life of a 19th-century woman who defied convention to become an actress, writer, and women’s advocate.

Born in 1824 in rural Goshen, New York, Rowena Granice Steele experienced an idyllic early childhood before her family relocated to New York City. There, she received an unusually thorough education in the city’s progressive public schools. The author brings this vanished world to life, offering detailed descriptions of the rigorous but compassionate instruction in practical skills—including needlework and penmanship—designed to lead girls to self-sufficiency. When her first husband abandoned her with their two young sons, Rowena made the desperate decision to go on stage—work considered scandalous for respectable women—to support her children. Throughout her life, Rowena was always “determined to excel in every aspect of life toward which she set her path, domestic and professional”; her stage career brought both acclaim and scandal, including a defamatory newspaper attack on her character. Later, Rowena reinvented herself as a fiction writer and editor of the Weekly Merced Herald (and later of the San Joaquin Valley Argus). For nearly three decades, she chronicled life in California’s Central Valley, championed education for women, and advocated for married women working outside the home. The biography’s exhaustive details are both its greatest strength and weakness. While the wealth of primary sources—including newspaper clippings, letters, and Rowena’s own writings—creates an immersive portrait of 19th-century American life, the narrative occasionally drowns in minutiae. Lengthy reproductions of school curricula and theatrical programs, and breakdowns of tangential family genealogy, sometimes overshadow the compelling human story at the book’s center. The most engaging sections feature Rowena’s own voice relaying her vivid reminiscences. Readers seeking a comprehensive historical record will be satisfied; those hoping for psychological insight into what drove this extraordinary woman may find themselves wanting more.

An impressively researched but occasionally overwhelming chronicle of a pioneering woman’s unconventional life.