Reviewed by: Texas Women and Ranching: On the Range, at the Rodeo, and in Their Communities ed. by Deborah M. Liles, Cecilia Gutiérrez Venable Diana M. Vela Texas Women and Ranching: On the Range, at the Rodeo, and in Their Communities. Edited By Deborah M. Liles and Cecilia Gutiérrez Venable. (College Station: Texas A&M University Press, 2019. Pp. 192. Photographs, notes, bibliography, index.) Born out of a symposium held at Midwestern State University, this nine-chapter, edited collection on Texas women and ranching is needed and welcomed. Each chapter features a different person or persons and covers a wide group of women from differing economic, racial, and social backgrounds. Their core commonality is love of land. Light Townsend Cummins provides the introduction, noting something that those in the field have known and experienced for quite some time: there must be a new lens with which to view and examine women in what is now Texas. The nine contributors are all actively and professionally involved in [End Page 252] the topic, and as such the book illuminates the challenges associated with recovering women’s voices and stories: lack of historical record, inconsistency in census terms (as noted by Liles in chapter 2: what does the description “farmer” encompass?), and the tradition of females taking their husbands’ surnames, which makes tracing their history often trying. However, these authors were able to access primary source material to piece together stories and, consequently, reveal new areas for further exploration. A few of the ranchers profiled are possibly better known than others, at least to those working in the field: Cornelia Adair, Kathryn and Nancy Binford, Alice East, and Frances Kallison. But even those subjects benefit from fresh examinations and the use of rarely, if ever, accessed primary source material. For example, Alex Hunt’s chapter on Adair makes use of her personal letters housed at the Panhandle-Plains Historical Museum, offering a unique look into Adair’s thoughts. Renee Laegreid illustrates the regional differences among the women as it relates to gender roles in her chapter on the mother-daughter ranching owner/operator team of Kathryn and Nancy Binford in the Panhandle. Amy Porter introduces us to María Calvillo, who benefitted from Spanish laws of inheritance that did not show consistent preference to males. The chapter is heavy on context and we learn little from Calvillo explicitly, for some of the same reasons cited above, yet the fact that Porter has rescued Calvillo from obscurity is to be commended—and she is correct in her assessment that while Tejanos have often been included in discussions of Texas ranching roots, Tejanas have been largely ignored. But clearly, that charge could be made about many females in Texas ranching. Deborah M. Liles examines census documents and laments the difficulty in recovering stories of women in the livestock trade. One can almost feel her frustration jump off the page, yet she is still able to demonstrate with her research that age, ethnicity, and marital status did not prevent these women from participating in the livestock economy. In fact, these women were actively involved before the end of the Civil War. Liles has proved these women were contributors to the trade; the challenge is resurrecting their stories. Anyone who studies ranchers in early Texas is familiar with the fence-cutting wars. Brooke Wibracht points out that they were not exclusively male-on-male fights. Using primary source material, including letters written by women, she demonstrates how women used discursive practices as a tool, as their “weapon” of choice in the wars. This chapter also speaks to the larger point covered in the entire book: women’s history was not recorded about them, or for them. Women recorded their own histories through the one tool available: writing. As these authors have ably demonstrated, these women existed, and their histories are important. It takes time and financial resources to track [End Page 253] them down; yet getting them admittance into the mainstream curriculum, starting at the grade school level, is another issue entirely. The collection serves well as a place for scholars to cull possible leads for their own research from the substantial chapter endnotes, and...