O My America Six Women & Their Second Acts in a New World

Wheelers career has propelled her from pole to pole—camping in Arctic igloos, tracking Indian elephants, contemplating East African swamps so hot that toads explode—but as she stared down the uncharted territory of middle age, she found herself in need of a guide. “Fifty is a tough age,” she writes. “Role models are scarce for women contemplating a second act.” Scarce, that is, until she stumbled upon Fanny Trollope.

In 1827, Fanny, mother of Anthony, swapped England for Ohio with hopes of bolstering the family finances. There, failure and disappointment hounded the immigrant for three years before she returned home to write one of the most sensational travel accounts of the nineteenth century. Domestic Manners of the Americans made an instant splash on both sides of the Atlantic, where readers both relished and reviled Trollopes caustic take on the newly independent country. Her legacy became the stuff of legend: “Trollopize” emerged as a verb meaning “to abuse the American nation”; Mark Twain judged her the best foreign commentator on his country; the last king of France threw a ball in her honor. Fanny Trollope was forty-nine when she set out for America, and Wheeler, approaching fifty herself, was smitten. Fanny was living proof of life after fertility, and she led Wheeler to other trailblazers: the actress and abolitionist Fanny Kemble, the radical sociologist Harriet Martineau, the homesteader Rebecca Burlend, the traveler Isabella Bird, and the novelist Catherine Hubback—women born within half a century of one another who all reinvented themselves in a transforming America, the land of new beginnings.

In O My America!, Wheeler tracks her subjects from the Mississippi to the cinder cones of the Mayacamas at the tail end of the Cascades, armed with two sets of maps for each adventure: one current and one the women before her would have used. Bright, spirited, and tremendous tantrum-throwers, these ladies proved to be the best travel companion Wheeler could have asked for. “I had more fun writing this book than all my previous books put together,” she writes—and it shows. Ambitious and full of life, O My America! is not only a great writers reckoning with a young country, but also an exuberant tribute to fresh starts, second acts, and six unstoppable women.

“Smashing . . . An informative and ultimately tragic tour of a region in the throes of drastic change.” —Dennis Drabelle, The Washington Post

“Exceptional . . . With wry humor and extensive research, Wheeler captures a swiftly transforming region.” —Holly Morris, The New York Times Book Review

“Funny and feisty . . . Hugely pleasurable.” —Christopher Hirst, The Independent

“It probably cannot be taught—a writer either is or is not sympathetic, amusing, insightful and informative. Sara Wheeler has had it from the off. You want to travel with her, and you want to travel blind.” —Roger Hutchinson, The Scotsman

“Precise . . . Compelling . . . A tribute to female exuberance in that most unsung of settings: middle age . . . Wheeler is consistently deft both at conveying atmosphere and character.” —Talitha Stevenson, The Observer

“Perfect for women who want to shake a fist at the fading light.” —Ginny Dougary, The Guardian

“A true celebration.” —Ruth Scurr, The Daily Telegraph

“Wheeler is a writer of great composure and energy, and out of these American adventures she fashions something unexpected and compelling.” —Anthony Sattin, The Spectator

“Filled with rollicking anecdotes and entertaining facts.”—Sarah Churchwell, New Statesman

“Touching . . . Carefully observed and finely written . . . [O My America! ] is not quite biography or history or memoir or the kind of travelogue for which this writer is justly praised but an oddly successful hybrid of them all.” —Kate Colquhoun, Daily Express

After reckoning with the far ends of the earth in acclaimed books such as The Magnetic North and Terra Incognita, Sara Wheeler rediscovered America. Thirty-five years after a Greyhound trip across the country, she returns in turbulent midlife to trace the steps of six women who fled various sorts of trouble in nineteenth-century England and came to the United States to reinvent themselves.

     In O My America! her travel companions include Fanny Trollope, mother of Anthony and author of the biting Domestic Manners of the Americans; the actress Fanny Kemble, who shocked the nation with her passionate firsthand indictment of slavery; the prolifically pamphleteering economist Harriet Martineau; the homesteader Rebecca Burlend, who had never been more than twelve miles from her Yorkshire village before she sailed to the New World; the traveler Isabella Bird, whose many ailments remained in check as long as she was scaling the Rockies; and the novelist Catherine Hubback, a niece of Jane Austen, who deposited her husband in a madhouse and rode the rails to San Francisco.

     Tough-minded outsiders, these womens truest qualities emerged in a country as incomplete and tentative as their native land was staid and settled. And they discovered second acts for themselves at a time when the world expected them to politely disappear. From the swampy heat of Georgias Sea Islands to the icy purity of the Cascades, Wheeler finds their path, and her own.

The award-winning author of Terra Incognita tracks six women who transformed themselves in the New World

In O My America!, the travel writer and biographer Sara Wheeler embarks on a journey across the United States, guided by the adventures of six women who reinvented themselves as they chased the frontier west.

     Wheelers career has propelled her from pole to pole, but as she stared down the uncharted territory of middle age, she found herself in need of a guide. “Fifty is a tough age,” she writes. “Role models are scarce for women contemplating a second act.” Scarce, that is, until she stumbled upon Fanny Trollope.

     In 1827, Fanny, mother of Anthony, swapped England for Ohio, where failure hounded her for years before she wrote the sensational travel account Domestic Manners of the Americans. She was forty-nine when she set out for America, and she led Wheeler to other trailblazers: the actress and abolitionist Fanny Kemble, the radical sociologist Harriet Martineau, the homesteader Rebecca Burlend, the traveler Isabella Bird, and the novelist Catherine Hubback.

     Wheeler tracks her bright and spirited subjects from the Mississippi to the cinder cones of the Mayacamas. “I had more fun writing this book than all my previous books put together,” she claims—and it shows. Ambitious and full of life, O My America! is not only a great writers reckoning with a young country but also an exuberant tribute to fresh starts, second acts, and six unstoppable women.

Sara Wheeler is the author of many books of biography and travel, including Access All Areas: Selected Writings 1990-2011 (NPP, 2013) and Travels in a Thin Country: A Journey Through Chile. Terra Incognita: Travels in Antarctica was an international bestseller that The New York Times described as “gripping, emotional” and “compelling,” and The Magnetic North: Notes from the Arctic Circle (FSG, 2011) was chosen as Book of the Year by Michael Palin and Will Self, among others. Wheeler lives in London.