Dearest Clara

<p><strong>Meet the Nichols sisters-Clara Alice and Cornelia Nell-and discover the thoughts and sentiments of </strong><strong style=color: rgba(0 0 0 1)>three commonplace </strong><strong>working-class women through their never-before-published correspondence. Clara the eldest and most responsible sister whose ambitions are thwarted by her gender; Alice the middle sister dependable and independent minded who finds herself living far from Michigan on the Kansas frontier; and Nell the youngest and most headstrong of the three whom we come to know the best. Her letters from 1858 to 1898 show her evolution from an opinionated eighteen-year-old young woman to middle-aged wife and mother determined despite legal and cultural obstacles to maintain her dignity in a troubled marriage and difficult family.</strong></p><p>Through their letters <span style=color: rgba(0 0 0 1)>we witness how the sisters navigate personal struggles family responsibilities and economic hardships. W</span>e are privy to the depth of their affection for one another their shared confidences and the dynamics of their sometimes complicated relationship. The sisters give us a glimpse into a time when clothing was handmade when childhood diseases were rampant when women rarely had autonomy or agency when distances were measured not in hours but in days and when family was paramount.</p><p>F<span style=color: rgba(0 0 0 1)>amily letters are an enormous untapped resource for historians and genealogists alike. </span>In <em>Dearest Clara</em> independent researcher Gail D. Zona analyzes the Nichols sisters' correspondence individually and as a whole. Women have been overlooked by history and ordinary women have been overlooked to an even greater extent. <span style=color: rgba(0 0 0 1)>While the Nichols sisters' writings reveal their characters and individuality their letters also shed light on the common values and norms by which their generation lived. T</span>he very ordinariness of the Nichols sisters makes their letters remarkable.</p>