The volume includes a lengthy bibliography.

Foreword by Glenda RileyIntroduction: The Strange Career of Madame Dubuque and Midwestern Women's HistoryWendy Hamand Venet and Lucy Eldersveld MurphyI. Four Lives1. Leadership within the Women's Community: Susie Bonga Wright of the Leech Lake OjibweRebecca Kugel2. Journeywoman Milliner: Emily Austin, Migration, and Women's Work in the Nineteenth Century MidwestLucy Eldersveld Murphy3. Mary McDowell and Municipal Housekeeping: Women's Political Activism in Chicago, 1890Karen M. Mason4. The Limits of Community: Martha Friesen of Hamilton County, KansasPamela Riney-KehrbergII. Community and Leadership5. "For the good of her people": Continuity and Change for Native Women of the Midwest, 1650-18506. "Those with whom I feel most nearly connected": Kinship and Gender in Early OhioTamara G. Miller7. The Ethnic Female Public Sphere: German-American Women in Turn-of-the-Century ChicagoChristiane Harzig8. Sisterhood and Community: The Sisters of Charity and African-American Women's Health Care inIndianapolis, 1876-1920Earline Rae FergusonIII. Work9. "The indescribable care devolving upon a housewife": Women's and Men's Perceptions of PioneerFoodways on the Midwestern FrontierSarah F. McMahon10. Changing Times: Iowa Farm Women and Cooperative Home Economics Extension in the1920s and1950sDorothy Schwieder11. Women, Unions, and Debates over Work during World War II in IndianaNancy F. Gabin12. "Making Rate": Mexicana Immigrant Workers in an Illinois Electronics PlantIrene Campos CarrBibliography