An ardent early suffragette, Edna Brush Perkins set out in 1920 with her friend, Charlotte Hannahs Jordan, to journey into the Mojave, both women seeking to escape civilization and their struggle to secure voting rights for women. The Mojave at that time was considered to be a desolate, inaccessible region--part of the fading American frontier. Originally published in 1922, The White Heart of Mojave is Perkins' account of this journey.

Perkins' evocative writing describes the landscape and the people she encounters. As editor Peter Wild writes, this is ultimately the story of two wealthy women who enter Death Valley "as a sort of middle-aged lark" and "emerge from the trip profoundly changed."