JWA often profiles authors on our website. Imagine our pleasant surprise this week when we found out we inspired an author! When Anna Solomon came across our feature on Jewish women who were pioneers of the American west, she was fascinated. She never even knew such women existed. She kept reading, and when she found the story of Rachel Bella Kahn, that proverbial light when off in her writer’s mind. Rachel was a mail-order bride in the late 1800s. Anna couldn’t stop thinking about what it would be like to live that kind of life in that untamed frontier.

As Anna says in Tablet, she became intrigued—then obsessed. That obsession became the spark for her novel-in-progress, The Little Bride.

We love hearing stories like this, because they really symbolize what JWA is all about. By telling the stories of women whose contributions too often go unnoticed, we strive to inspire our readers by sharing these women’s challenges and triumphs. As Anna says, “There are many stereotypes of Jewish women, and mail-order-bride isn’t one of them.”

And if you think that Rachel Kahn was the only Jewish woman out on the wild frontier, check out our This Week in History birthday tribute to Flora Langerman Spiegelberg (she would have celebrated her 154th birthday this past weekend). One of just eight women living in Santa Fe in 1879, she helped establish the city’s first non-sectarian school as well as the city’s first children’s playground and garden. She did all this while running two religious schools, and raising money to build a new three-room school house. Talk about a can-do spirit!

Congratulations to Anna. We can’t wait for the book to come out!