The Wild West of Women
In Glendon Swarthout's novel, a journey of resistance in the fascinating American lands of the mid-nineteenth century
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In the second half of the nineteenth century, the American government decided to exploit the immense resources and vast spaces of the western territories, the so-called Far West. These lands, which extended between the eastern and western coasts of the United States, were fertile and suitable for agriculture and livestock farming. However, settling in these areas meant undertaking a journey of months to lands far from any inhabited center, facing - and sometimes clashing - with the native tribes that had inhabited those places since time immemorial, resisting hunger, cold, fatigue and disease.
Despite the many dangers, millions of immigrants from Europe chose these risks, preferring them to the certainty of poverty and hunger that awaited them in their countries of origin. Among these pioneers, many were Germans, Scandinavians and Irish, and often entire families left, including men and women. For women, life was extremely difficult. They found themselves living in a violent world, dominated by the violence of nature and of men.
The women of the Wild West are the protagonists of the novel "The Companion" (Jimenez Edizioni, 2025, pp. 256), written by one of the great masters of Western narrative, Glendon Swarthout.
The novel - which was adapted into the film The Homesman directed by and starring Tommy Lee Jones, with Hilary Swank and Meryl Streep - begins in 1850, in the desolate lands of Nebraska. The story revolves around Mary Bee Cuddy, a lonely and indomitable schoolteacher, who takes on a desperate mission: to escort four women, deeply scarred by the experience of life on the frontier and now fallen prey to madness, to Hebron, Iowa.
To complete this arduous mission, Mary Bee relies on George Briggs, an unreliable drifter whom she saved from certain death. Briggs is a man who lives on the margins of society, just like the women he accompanies: fragile and worn souls, marked by years of isolation and toil, trapped in a territory that has slowly consumed them. Together, Mary Bee and Briggs face, in reverse, the current of colonization, crossing snowstorms, wild lands and constant dangers. Their journey becomes a fight against loneliness, an attempt to resist and, who knows, to discover a new beginning.
With a gripping and incisive narrative, Swarthout takes us into a frontier story that places the lives of women at the center, offering a raw and authentic portrait of the harsh living conditions and the struggle for survival during the colonial era.
The result is a compelling story, rich in humanity, hope and disappointment, beauty and brutality, that tells the story of the forgotten lives of those who failed to survive the fragile dream of the Old West.
