Devoted to the pains and pleasures of being female, the Museum of the Revolution--with exhibits such as "The Menstrual Show" (performed in redface), "The Hard-to-Please Momma," and "The Litany of the Clothes"--is under siege. The City Fathers, frightened by its continual expansion, are out to destroy it once and for all. But the City Fathers haven't reckoned with the residents of Heartbreak Hotel, a way station for Museum tour guides on mandatory rest leave, including an ex-nun, an unhappy comic, an aging cheerleader, a bitter cop, an accomplished translator, and a very sensuous ex-car...

Tamsen Donner. For most the name conjures the ill-fated Donner party trapped in the snows of the Sierra Nevada Mountains in 1846-47. Others might know Tamsen as the stoic pioneer woman who saw her children to safety but stayed with her dying husband at the cost of her own life. For Gabrielle Burton, Tamsen's story, fascinating in its own right, had long seemed something more: the story of a woman's life writ large, one whose impossible balancing of self, motherhood, and marriage spoke to Burton's own experience.

This book tells of Burton's search to solve the mystery of...

Tamsen Donner. For most the name conjures the ill-fated Donner party trapped in the snows of the Sierra Nevada Mountains in 1846-47. Others might know Tamsen as the stoic pioneer woman who saw her children to safety but stayed with her dying husband at the cost of her own life. For Gabrielle Burton, Tamsen's story, fascinating in its own right, had long seemed something more: the story of a woman's life writ large, one whose impossible balancing of self, motherhood, and marriage spoke to Burton's own experience.

This book tells of Burton's search to solve the mystery of...