Polly Pry: The Woman Who Wrote the West

Reporters who wrote for newspapers in the western half of America during the late 1800s and early 1900s helped write the myths that have become the history of that era, to the point that it has become difficult to separate fact from fiction. This short biography gives us the life and times of Leonel Ross Campbell, better known as Polly Pry. There is not much evidence about how she was raised or her education. What we do know is that she ended up in Denver when it was a booming mining town and got a job reporting on stories that had an impact on how people would remember those frontier days. There is some contention that not all of her articles were true, such as going to Europe and possibly even meeting Pancho Villa. But she was able to do what few women could do, make her mark.

It is not easy to write about a person who really only leaves newspaper articles behind, but I think Julia Bricklin could have done better to explore more thoroughly the reasons behind some of her writings; but overall it is fairly decent.