What did these pioneering women have in common?

​

This book is a fascinating look at women’s progress throughout the years, exemplified through local women who took on leadership roles that have made a lasting difference in our community, including social services, housing, education, health care, parks and recreation, historic preservation, the arts, and the environment. Through its pages you will reconnect with Anne Rudin, Illa Collin, Lynn Robie, Sandy Smoley, Kay Knepprath, Heather Fargo, and so many other familiar names.

​

Christine Hunter has announced that all proceeds from the book will be donated to the Anne Rudin Scholarship program maintained by the League of Women Voters of Sacramento County to provide financial support and assistance to the next wave of outstanding women to ensure the continuity of strong female leadership in our community and in our society.

“Thank you for preserving the history of women and their struggles in a realm that previously was reserved for men. Your reporting will give women in my daughter and granddaughters’ generations a peek into those whose shoulders they now stand on.”

Nancy Compton, Chair, League of Women Voters Anne Rudin Scholarship Fund

Reviews

“This lovely book is a perfect example of what happens to a city’s history when women act within it, and then write it: the city becomes a more complicated, nuanced, and unexpected place than it once was. Hunter’s narrative draws us into the lives and the agency of Sacramento’s women, and demands us to know the complexities of its past and the boldness of the women who are no longer just past, but now omnipresent. Wonderful!”

Dr. Eliane Leslau Silverman, Professor Emeritus, Women's Studies, University of Calgary

“Very interesting reading. I learned things I hadn’t known before. I’m proud of my mother for being a ‘city father’.”

Barbara Rudin