author
Edna Brush Perkins
1880–1930
Best known for a vivid Mojave Desert travel book, this Cleveland-born writer also lived a strikingly active public life as a suffrage organizer, painter, and reformer. Her work brings together adventure, sharp observation, and the sense of a woman determined to move freely through the world.
1 Audiobook
The White Heart of Mojave: An Adventure with the Outdoors of the Desert
by Edna Brush Perkins
About the author
Born in Cleveland, Ohio, in 1880, Edna Brush Perkins grew up in a prominent family and developed talents in the arts early on. Sources describe her as a painter as well as a pianist, and later as a writer whose life reached well beyond the literary world.
She was deeply involved in civic and political work, especially the woman suffrage movement in Cleveland. Reference sources also note her role in reform causes and in helping found the Women's City Club, showing how closely her writing life was tied to public engagement.
Readers now most often meet her through The White Heart of Mojave (1922), her account of a desert journey that helped secure her place as a travel writer. She died in 1930, but her books still stand out for their independence of spirit and their feel for landscape.