Based on the successful lecture/performance that Anne Butler and Ona Siporin have been presenting throughout the Intermountain West for several years, this work brings their art, scholarship and wisdom to the printed page. Uncommon Common Women will broaden and enrich the general reader's understanding of women's lives during the western emigration era. The authors cast a wide net; they are not interested in promoting the stereotypes of the West - the schoolmarm and the dance hall girl - but rather in bringing to notice the forgotten roles and gritty realities of women's lived experience during what was often a brutally difficult time.