Calamity Jane: Her Life and Her Legend

Faber's ( Eleanor Roosevelt ) biography of the famed ``Calamity Jane'' follows two threads. Martha Cannary (1852-1903) drove bull teams and traveled extensively around the West, but in her later years was also an alcoholic who survived only with the help of friends. Calamity Jane was a larger-than-life six-gun-shooting frontierswoman, and Faber skillfully interweaves snippets from the life of the real woman with an exploration of the legend that grew up around her, nourished in large part by Ned Wheeler's dime novels. The contrast between Cannary's unconventional but ultimately tragic life and the undying myth attached to her illuminates not only the real lives of women in the 19th-century West but also the American impulse to idealize the frontier, a romantic tendency which Faber relates to ``Europe's legends about medieval knights in armor.'' Period prints and photographs are informative and attractive; some imaginative choices expand on related facts mentioned in the text. Ages 10-14. (Sept.)