The White Heart of Mojave

Edna Brush Perkins visited Death Valley with her good friend and fellow suffragette Charlotte Jordan chronicling their beautiful, sometimes harrowing travels in The White Heart of Mojave, which was published in 1922. With lively wit, humor, intelligence, and poetic flair, Perkins brings their journey-and a world that has vastly changed-vividly to life. On a train to California, where the car they intend to use on their still-unplanned road trip holiday awaits, Perkins and Jordan decide to explore Death Valley. They are urged by hotel owners, friends, and even the Automobile Club not to undertake what was then was a dangerous venture into largely uninhabited and inhospitable terrain. They press on. Finally they find a champion to act as guide and official "Worrier" in the person of Julius Meyer. After loading an old wagon in Beatty, Nevada, with more supplies than seems reasonable at the time they hitch up their "desert-proof" steeds Bill and Molly and venture into Death Valley. The travelers survive the heat and dearth of water, sandstorms, snow, icy mountains, and exhaustion, and emerge with a sense of awe for the region that readers of Perkins' classic travelogue can only come to share.