Women of Courage
   Katherine Martin
  1999 New World Library, Novato, CA USA
   ISBN: 1577310934


The women in this book push against the grain, defy complacency & reach for their dreams. The stories go beyond gender, conveying hope & inspiration & the power of women's voices to speak out, to risk, to break barriers & find truth.

This is Book One in the People Who Dare series New World Library is publishing & offers spiritual & metaphysical principles made real through bold action of the women discovered.

Katherine Martin, who started this book as a “courage voyeur”, wanting to “vicariously feel that rush of victory from challenges conquered...what it was like to slay the dragon...”. Courage, she discovered, was rather more deep than that!

“Courage...can be a fragile, vulnerable thing, a quiet moment. It can be a deep look into our souls, a stillness with our divinity. It can be found in the exhalation of love...in the speaking of truth...in forgiving and the making of peace.”

When Katherine went to interview Isabel Allende she expected to talk about the coup in Chile & they ended up far away from there. Ann Bancroft willingly told of her trek across the South Pole yet that wasn't where she faced her biggest challenge. Dr. Elizabeth Newhall, covered in a bulletproof vest in a bulletproof home, had something else on her mind besides anti-abortion groups.

It is Riane Eisler, in her serene home on the coast of California who gave Katherine this gracious insight: “So many of the models of courage we've had, ones that are still taught to boys and girls, are about going out to slay the dragon, to kill. It's a courage that's born out of fear, anger, and hate...there's this other kind of courage. It's the courage to risk your life, not in war, not in battle, not our of fear...out of love and a sense of injustice that has to be challenged. It takes far more courage to challenge unjust authority without violence than it takes to kill all the monsters in all the stories told to children about the meaning of bravery.”

As I read deeper & deeper into Katherine's explorations of courage, I too learned greatly from these women & I too was humbled by them. Courage brings us home to our hearts & home to ourselves as women, not as women trying to be gutsy like men.

41 women are featured in this thought-provoking book: some have names we recognize immediately from politics, medicine, spirituality & literature. Some for their derring-do & some for their expressions of inspiration.

Some have made no headlines as they work with our homeless citizens or live with HIV, poverty or teach welfare mothers. One filmed documentaries in dangerous political places. Another survived imprisonment at the hands of rebel bandits in a little known nation only to go to work, upon release, with refugees in ethnic-cleansing zones. Another stepped out of the shadow of a best-selling husband & learnt to speak her own piece while another is a pilgrim upon her walk toward spiritual knowledge.

Listening to their words, remarking upon Katherine Martin's commentary, I have found myself in good company & would willingly offer any one of these brave women my seat by the fire & a cup of tea!

A wonderful read & a keeper!

Katherine Martin is a screenwriter, editor & writer & lives in Portland, Oregon.
(03/04/01)

Rebecca