Fearless

In 1845, Sarah Borginnis Bowman follows the United States Army to Corpus Christi as a laundress and cook attached to Zachary Taylor’s forces. Widowed before the war begins, she refuses to leave the military community she regards as home. As the army crosses the disputed border and campaigns through northern Mexico, Sarah carries food and water, tends the wounded under fire and becomes known among the soldiers as the formidable “Great Western.”

The novel follows Sarah through the Mexican–American War and the unsettled borderlands that emerge from it, placing her marriages, friendships and business ventures beside the experiences of enlisted men and Mexican civilians. Robson uses Bowman's documented reputation to recover the labour of women who sustained nineteenth-century armies while also confronting the violence, opportunism and cultural collision produced by territorial expansion.