A reader recently sent me an article about a woman I had never heard of before. My readers know I love little tidbits of history, and now I can’t stop thinking about her.
In 1843, in an elegant parlor room, a woman named Paulina Wright Davis saw a life-sized model of the human body on a velvet table. It had no skin. Its painted layers revealed muscles, lungs, and a removable heart. How scandalous!
For most women of that era, even looking at such a thing would have been considered improper. The abomination was for sale, and Paulina, fascinated, bought it.
In the 1840s, respectable women were expected to read poetry, pour tea, and avoid unpleasant subjects. Medicine was a man’s domain. Women were often taught that their own bodies were delicate mysteries best left unexplored.
When they fainted from tightly laced clothing and lack of air, it was called weakness. When they suffered from chronic pain, they were prescribed rest and silence.
Paulina had seen too many women suffer in ignorance. Her own health had been fragile since childhood. She believed women deserved to understand how their bodies worked. So she did something shocking, yet practical in her eyes. She rented public halls and began giving lectures on human anatomy to women.
The model she used was made of painted paper and cardboard, imported from Paris. It had removable layers. She could lift away the chest plate and reveal the lungs. Remove the lungs and show the heart. At one early lecture, the room was packed. Local officials stood in the back, arms folded, waiting for scandal. When Paulina calmly removed the painted chest to reveal the heart beneath, one man reportedly fainted! Ha!
The newspapers took to Paulina’s venture like fleas to a dog and had a field day. She was called improper. Unnatural. 
Unladylike Bookings were canceled. Doors closed. Critics scoffed that anatomy was too grim a subject for female minds.
Paulina kept going. She packed up her model, traveled to the next town, and opened the crate again.
Layer by layer, she showed women what lived inside their own chests. She explained how blood moved through veins. How lungs filled with air. How muscles carried the body’s weight. Something powerful happened in those lecture halls. Women leaned forward.
For perhaps the first time, they saw themselves not as fragile mysteries, but as thoughtfully designed, capable bodies.
Paulina toured for years. Her quiet persistence helped build momentum for change. In 1848, the New England Female Medical College opened in Boston, the first medical school in the world established specifically to train women.
She later helped organize the National Women’s Rights Convention, continuing her work to expand women’s opportunities.
What strikes me most about her story isn’t the scandal. It’s the steadiness. She didn’t shout and bluster to the world about it. She simply lifted the chest plate and let women see their own hearts. Paulina’s heart led her to fight for social reform and was part of the National Women’s Rights Convention in 1850 of which she became president.
As writers of historical fiction — especially Western romance — we spend a lot of time imagining brave women stepping into new territories. Some cross prairies while others build ranches. Some start over in rough mining towns. And some open wooden crates in rented halls and refuse to close them again.
Courage doesn’t always look loud. Sometimes it looks like a woman standing calmly in front of a skeptical crowd, explaining how lungs breathe. And sometimes, that’s enough to change the world.
Is there a woman in history you admire? Maybe it’s a relative, or a teacher you had. I have a friend, Jahna. She’s maybe twelve years older than I am but has been like a second mom to me for years, and I greatly admire her and what she can accomplish in a very short time if she has to. I call her Mamasan.
I’m giving away an ebook of mine of choice to one lucky commenter!
With Valentine’s Day approaching, I’ve been leafing through some of my favorite research books. The kind you don’t just read, but linger over. I have some filled with old songs, poetry, and bits of folk wisdom that reveal how romance was viewed, hoped for, and sometimes warned against in earlier generations. What struck me most wasn’t just how much love mattered, but how playful, imaginative, and practical people were about it.
Apples show up again and again in love lore. A warmed apple shared, a peel tossed just so, seeds named and flung or balanced. All were said to reveal who loved you best or whom you might marry. There’s something wonderfully domestic about this kind of romance. Love wasn’t separate from daily life; it lived right there in the kitchen, in the orchard, in the small rituals of ordinary days.
Tucked among the rhymes and songs is my favorite piece of all: a bit of real-life advice passed from a father to his daughter in the early twentieth century. He cautioned her not to rush into marriage before truly knowing whom she loved. She listened. And decades later, she credited that patience with a long, happy marriage. After all the folklore and fun, that quiet wisdom lands with the most weight.
Life for a pioneer woman wasn’t for the faint of heart. She had to cook, clean, tend the children, wrangle laundry, feed the chickens, milk the cow, help in the fields, and still had to hitch up the horse and wagon anytime she needed something from the general store. And with all that work? Most women still longed for something more than chores and survival.
pave streets, build water and sewer systems and all that fun stuff. With nearly 2,000 residents, it was ready to grow… and the women of Lodi were ready to help guide that growth.
In 1915, they decided Lodi needed a woman’s clubhouse—their own place to gather, host events, and continue building their community. They formed the Lodi Woman’s Building Association and sold shares of stock to fund it. A building lot was purchased for $10 in gold at the northeast corner of Lee Avenue and Pine Street.
They hosted conventions, fashion shows featuring gowns from the 1830s onward, minstrel shows (as common for the era), and the town’s annual children’s Christmas parties. For decades, the clubhouse was the shining heart of Lodi’s social life.
Every autumn, pumpkins seem to take over the world. They perch on porches, fill our pies, scent our candles, and lately, they’ve even taken to the water. Yes, the water. Thank you to Shanna Hatfield for posting some pics from her excursion to the Tualatan Pumpkin Regatta on FB. Shanna was in the Portland area last week for a book signing and got to go see this spectacle. I had no idea such a thing even existed! And I don’t live that far away!
giant hollowed out pumpkins to race? Oh. My. Goodness! After all, Victorians and cowboys alike loved a good party.
Now imagine if a few cowboys from the Old West had a pumpkin regatta! You can bet they wouldn’t be content to simply paddle their pumpkins across the water, no, siree. They’d line up their hollowed-out gourds like canoes, tip their hats to the crowd, and shout “Yee-haw!” as they raced for them with one hand on a paddle, the other keeping a hold of their hat. The race would probably turn it into a full-blown rodeo on water. I can just see the sheriff trying to keep order while the town’s blacksmith bets his week’s wages on the fastest pumpkin, and a fiddler on the dock strikes up Turkey in the Straw to spur them on. By the end of it, someone’s pumpkin would’ve sprung a leak, someone else would be fishing their boots out of the drink, and the whole town would be laughing so hard they’d forget who won.
Folks back in the day knew how to have fun around this time of year and they certainly had imagination. Whether it was a fruitcake prophecy or a pumpkin pie eating contest, it all came down to the same thing. Celebrating the harvest, sharing laughter, and finding joy in the turning of the season.
Writing western romance isn’t about just the romance. I love building a strong sense of community into my books, be they historical or contemporary. I’ve created entire towns that now have third and fourth generation characters living in them. Each town has its own traditions, and you’d think putting on a play would be harmless enough. Not in my fictional town of Clear Creek!
“That doesn’t matter,” Sheriff Tom said with a drawl. “They were snooping, and they’ll be the example of why the rest of the town shouldn’t nose around our rehearsals.”
Vi laughed and shook her head, then snapped Ottie with a dish towel.
Petticoats and Pistols turned eighteen on 8/13/2025. Each of us said a few words about what we did when we turned eighteen. I decided it would be fun to elaborate. 
twenty to twenty-four horses as I recall, and two grooms, myself and another girl. From there, it was grooming and rubbing down the horses, and putting them on the hot walker for either exercise or to cool down after galloping. Seven. Days. A week. No breaks. No holidays. Just the kind of work that builds grit, muscle, and a real appreciation for a hot shower, if you were lucky enough to get one.
Because at eighteen, I learned what it meant to earn something. Not just money, but pride. Not to mention confidence and discipline. I wasn’t reading about a heroine in a western book back then, not by a long shot. But I see her in that version of me now. The one who did hard things to make her dreams happen. The one who didn’t wait around for life to give her a story. Instead, she went out and wrote one.
On April 25, 1970, disaster struck when a fire destroyed the grandstand. Thankfully, no lives—human or equine—were lost, though the blaze ended the meet early. By 1971, the facilities had been rebuilt, and the reopening drew a record crowd of 12,635.
behind the Tilt-A-Whirl and the cotton candy booth. It wasn’t glamorous. It wasn’t easy. And it definitely wasn’t boring. At that particular race track, Portland Meadows, my dad was chief of security at the time for the racing commission, so no one dared mess with me or my sister, who was galloping horses at the time and starting her career as a jockey.