washington. >> first up, the story of norwegian immigrant, in 1896 she an her daughter walked for seven months in an effort to win a thousand dollar prize as they tried to save her family's farm. >> forgotten american woman who did an amazing almost 4,000-mile walk across america in 1896 with her daughter in long victorian dresses on 10,000-dollar wager and the story was lost over a hundred years and silenced intentionally and yet no woman had ever done, amazing story, a woman with courage and determination to shape her family's destiny. the title of my book is bold

spirits, forgotten walk across victoria in america. i wanted her story to be told because ordinary women stories are lost in history. i had a history major and only heard a paragraph or two about eleanor and adams. i believe they are part of our western history, in fact, there had been a western women's conference call, historians realized we didn't have the story, the chicano in the west, japanese, we were missing our stories and one of the parts that were missing is american women who had lived extraordinary calls even though they are called, quote, ordinary women. her father died when she was two. her stepfather and mother

immigrated with her when she was 11 to america and they settled in michigan to begin with and then she gets pregnant at 15 and we don't know the background on that, there are several options but they then moved out to minnesota and they had arranged marriage with a norwegian who is her husband and that's where she was for many years before she came to spokane. what happened was he was a trained carpenter and they moved out to spokane washington after being in minnesota and rough time in minnesota and they were able to build a house, have a farm and be able to sell it to come west and that was a time when there was a lot of encouragement for settlers to come to the west. he becomes a union carpenter,

they are doing very well, they have nine children at that point, actually 11 children eventually and but then the recession hits spokane very hard, it hits all of america, 1893, but that time they had moved to a farm which is a railroad distance away, 25 minutes from the city, he could still work in the city but they had pigs, they had a lot of fruits, they had other ways to keeping family alive, so when the recession came and he also got injured and he couldn't work, there were no jobs, they had to feed this large family and she -- they couldn't pay the mortgage and taxes on their home which was happening. we had something like 11 banks closed in spokane all within a shift. so the thought of her family breaking up and them being split apart because where does the homeless woman go who is bankrupt in a city with that

many children, you would have to have the older kids work outside the home, you would be lucky anybody who would rent to you. well, that fear and knowing that a farm you could stay alive, she hears about a 10,000-dollar wager and wagers were common in that era f she would only walk across america unescorted, she would get $10,000 which is over 200,000 in our time. that was a miracle to educate the children, keep the farm, they could stay alive and so that motivated her to try to do something that was very challenging. you know, sometime in the winter and spring of 1896 and what we do know, they lost a child in that time to an illness and that -- she was in a time of grief. they had been able to keep the large family alive. they only lost one son early on as infant and this was a time of

sorrow, when she hears this it's a time of stress. it's also a time where the women are very strong, you do not leave the home specially to walk across america. for some reason, she had the decision encouraged to take this walk. she wrote clara, a beautiful young woman and had several stipulations of what they had to do and what they had to bring. they did bring a smith&westen. they had a curling iron. what is this item which you put over fire and heat it. they did not bring a change of clothes. they could only bring $5 and they had to earn their way along the routes and but they had had

to be six months from what we can tell. and that stipulation, to get there at a certain time and stop and earn the way along the way is what caused real problems, they were told if they were will, they would get extra time. that becomes an important issue later in the story. they actually began in downtown spokane, they were on the railroad and downtown spokane even though that was 25,000 miles from their home. they walked from the home and spent night with the family, one of the ways that we were able to find more about this lost story was the way that they could earn their money, was they were come into a town and go to the newspaper right away. no c-span at the time, they were going to the newspaper, they have a letter of introduction from the mayor of spokane that

said these are upstanding women, they have a farm, be sure to treat them well. very important letter of introduction in the victorian era. so they would go in and show the letter, show what they are doing and ask if they would please write them up and then a newspaper reported who would primarily be men at the time would write them up however they saw them, sometimes through pictures and so i was able to reconstruct the story, the family didn't have any of this, i was able to reconstruct the story by going into the old archives and seeing the 1896 newspapers along the route that hasn't been burnt. a lot of the cities burned and they lost the papers but those were still there. that's how we began to hear what they actually did and some of their encounters like with mountain lions, with heat, they had a lot of fear that is people were telling them about why they shouldn't do this, rough weather, rough men, because they were doing the railroads and

there are a lot of hobos at the time because they were homeless and they were hungry and they were looking for work and they were warned about them that, in fact, the men treated them really well, amazing kind of kindness, recognizing because those men understood what it was like -- mean what it was like to lose a home, there was a kind of kindness but wild animals, of course, were an issue and they were given all of these warnings and they heard the warnings but chose courage. by the time they got to salt lake city and over the mountains, they said, i think it was -- i'm sick of this trip, her daughter, i'm sick of this trip and if they had any idea, they were not going to quit, easier going from there east because it is more developed, they never left the railroads again. they were supposed to get there within about six months which would have been in december

about mid-december, there was a stipulation if they got ill they would let longer time and clara in colorado sprained her ankle and they lost ten days and didn't know if the sprain ankle would count as illness. they indicate up outside of new york city, they have to come into new york to a newspaper. that's where they are supposed to report. somebody miss directs them and they end up a little later. they get there about christmas eve and go into the newspaper, the picture of the oh women in the newspaper, one with a gun and one with the knife and -- from the wild west arrived and a couple of days later you hear and their fear says it under the picture, the fear that the responsors would not give them the reward is true. they received nothing and what was to me really, really strange was they didn't even -- the responsors didn't give train tickets for the women who had

been away from their large family for over six months. and then destined to new york. they were written up in several newspapers. they had to move to brooklyn and earn money there to get train tickets, the problem is they were one of hundreds of thousands of immigrants. they were not a special story. it was quite unusual what they were wearing, they spent six months in new york city in brooklyn and we have a picture of the boarding houses they were in, they couldn't save enough money to pay living expenses. they had no males helping them to pay living expenses and she gets telegram that one of the children died and panicked and the first time this proud woman goes to charity organization asking if she could just have a

loan to buy the train ticket and she will pay it back, i prove that i can work, no but we are willing to put you in the poor house, she didn't want any of this, her next thing was she went to talk to chaunce and convinced her to give her free tickets to chicago and they walked, i think, from there to minneapolis, but then when she gets home after minnesota, she gets home and finds out a second child has died and here is the tragedy of how the children because it's a -- he goes the bury them, he has to build the coffin, the pastor has to stay far away to do any blessing

because of the quarantine situation and she comes home to a family deeply disfraught and angry. they lost brother and sister and mom was not home. even though she lost the money, huge love more america because what happened and this happened today, when she was -- instead of what we hear in the newspaper, she met kindness all across the route, she met with governors, she met with mayors, ordinary ranchers, citizens, she learned how -- her daughter said who was not enthused but the trip, she's the one that said i'm sick of the trip, was better than college education because she learned so much about human nature.

when you come into a small farm area and rancher says come stay at the house, you have to make a quick judgment, how safe is my daughter and staying in the rancher's house overnight. there's a lot of issues. how do we keep ourselves alive when there's mountain lion going around, they discovered internal strength and great strength of our nation and grew real love for our country and she had life-long interest after that, they were walking the route at the same time of 1896, presidential election year and william mckinley, mckinley and bryant, a very hated election and mother and daughter disagreed on politics and so they had great discussions with people along the way. the other thing that happened, she had a life-long interest in politics, the other thing that happened is they walked through states where women are allowed to vote.

she becomes interested in women having rights and that was transformative for her. basically the book is not making a judgment, telling a story and it gives room for men and women to decide about a woman taking action. what i did like was the sponsors were two women and it was not a war story between two women, it was more something that went radically wrong, whoever the responsors were and we have done every rabbit trail to find the responsors. i wanted the history channel to do it because it's a story that deserves to find all the way. >> and now from book tv's crescent visit to spokane washington, nancy