Nancy Grey Osterud uses a rich store of diaries, letters, and other first-person documents, in addition to public and organizational records, to reconstruct the everyday lives of ordinary women of the past. Exploring large questions within the confines of a single community, she analyzes the ways in which notions of gender structured women's interactions with their families and neighbors, their place in the farm family economy, and their participation in organized community activities. Rare turn-of-the-century photographs of the rural landscape, formal and informal family portraits, and scenes of daily life and labor add a special dimension to . It should find a ready audience among women's historians, labor historians, rural historians, and historians of New York State.