Women's stories often get lost because so much of women's history resides in private places such as diaries, family scrapbooks, family letters, or papers stored in boxes in family attics. Women often are hard to find, and once found, can be hard to track over time as they change their names when they get married. And sometimes they marry more than once, which increases the challenge. This was what fourteen Fort Worth women took on when they agreed to write a chapter each on the history of women in their city.
From pioneer women to the movers and shakers of the mid-twentieth century,...

"Grace & Gumption: Stories of Fort Worth Women" (TCU Press, 2007) was a collection of profiles about women who moved beyond the traditional role of keeping house to make significant contributions to the history of Fort Worth. But whenever the fourteen authors of the original book gathered to make decisions, share information, give progress reports, and ask for help, they also shared wine and food.
But a cookbook of recipes used by the very women who were stepping out of the kitchen? Feeding themselves and their families was as vital to the women of "Grace & Gumption," as it is to women,...