"The Italian musical term ‘ostinato’ - a phrase or motif repeated rhythmically over and over - describes the presence of the Wyoming cowboy very precisely and creates something musical in the structure of this novel." --San Francisco Artist Rafael Landea (Complete Review)

A wonderful book, beautifully written! --Barnes & Noble review

"A generational tale deftly written with penetrating insight, personality, and feeling, Burning of the Marriage Hat is very highly recommended reading and would make an exceptional selection choice for women's reading groups." --The Midwest Book Review
"Burning of the Marriage Hat is a powerful book that uses the medium of fiction to explore serious social issues." Cynthia Parkhill, Lake County Record-Bee
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"Down in the south just north of Cheyenne, there's wind as usual banging at windows, shaking doors, wearing away the psyches of housewives whose lives are governed by how strong the breezes that blow across Wyoming." --excerpt from Burning of the Marriage Hat, ( ©Copyright by Margaret Benshoof-Holler)

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A: This is a story about a modern-day woman, a world-traveled woman who returns to her roots to resolve conflicting family accounts about her grandmother's death. This is also a book about the lives of women across the 20th century in Wyoming and these are seen through the narrator's flashbacks through time. The setting is Wyoming because that's were the author came of age and where her roots are. Since leaving Wyoming over 30 years ago, the author has lived throughout the world and now lives in San Francisco. She has a broad perspective honed not just from one geographical area but from many different places. The author's Wyoming roots, though, are what give the story flavor and a different perspective.

Wyoming's motto is the "Equality State" because that's where women first gained the right to vote and sit on juries in the United States. Wyoming is also called the "Cowboy State." The "Equality State" and the "Cowboy State"--two contrasting themes played out in the characters of this book.

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Radio Interviews

Author Margaret Benshoof-Holler has been featured on:

• KALW 97.1 FM, San Francisco, CA, author Margaret Benshoof-Holler interviewed by Paul Linde on "Health, Mind and Body."
  
  
• Author Margaret Benshoof-Holler Interviewed by KGO AM 810's Ed Baxter on the Morning News in San Francisco
  
  
• Author Margaret Benshoof-Holler interviewed by Emily Elfenbein, WBEB 101-FM, Philadelphia, PA "The Women's File." Women's File Interview
  
  
• Author Margaret Benshoof-Holler interviewed by Don Riggs, KMPS-94.1 FM morning news, Seattle, WA.
  
  
• Author Margaret Benshoof-Holler interviewed by Susan Franzblau for "Women's Voices Women's Lives" on NPR affiliate WFSS, 91.9 FM Fayetville, North Carolina with a focus on Burning of the Marriage Hat and conditions of unwed pregnant women.
  
  
• KPFA 94.1 FM, Berkeley, CA, author Margaret Benshoof-Holler interviewed by Denny Smithson on "Cover to Cover."
  
  
• Author Margaret Benshoof-Holler interviewed on the Lorie & Julia Show, FM 107 WFMP Radio, St. Paul, Minnesota.
  
  
• KZYX 91.5 FM Mendocino, CA, author Margaret Benshoof-Holler interviewed by Janie Rezner on "Women's Voices"
  
  

TV

• Author Margaret Benshoof-Holler Interviewed by Barrie Louise-Switzen, Executive Producer for the Woman's Connection (sm) aired on the Manhattan Neighborhood Network in Manhattan on cable channel 34 and RCN channel 109. .

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"Just as the Wyoming wind carries some small tinge of my grandmother's voice as it blows across the prairie, it reminds me that I found no comfort out here on the high plains after my daughter was born and taken away. It was as if she had died. But there was no funeral. I wore no mourning shroud. No wailing wall for me to go to pound my fists and cry to the gods. 'Carmen! Carmen!'" --excerpt from Burning of the Marriage Hat, ( ©Copyright by Margaret Benshoof-Holler)

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Fiction / Women's History / Family History / the West /
Trade paperback, 8 1/2 X 5 1/2, 381 pages
ISBN: 0-9714473-2-2
LCC#: 2001095609
$14.95

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Author's Note

I began writing Burning of the Marriage Hat on a journey back to Wyoming to dig into family roots and to uncover some past mysteries. On one trip back, I also wrote a journalism piece about Matthew Shepherd, the gay University of Wyoming student who was beaten and tied to a fence post and left to die in sub-zero temperatures in 1998 near Laramie, Wyoming (entitled "Love and Hate in the Equality State" and published in the Hearst-owned San Francisco Examiner). Not being gay myself, but a woman who grew up in Wyoming during an era when conditions for women were not the best in any location in the U.S. (this was before the 1964 Civil Rights Act had a chance to settle in to prevent discrimination against anyone on the basis of sex, race or religion and before the 1972 passage of Roe v. Wade), I had a feel for the Matthew Shepherd story. And wrote it. But, in the process of writing that piece and developing the narrator Katherine in my book, I knew there was something more that I should be writing about Wyoming.

Burning of the Marriage Hat is a story about a middle-class family in a small prairie town in Wyoming and the coming of age of a young woman during the post-McCarthy era of the 1960s. It's the story of a woman who returns to her roots to release the ghosts of the past. Set in Wyoming, known as the "Equality State" because that's where women first gained the right to vote and sit on juries in the U.S. and also where I came of age on the cusp of the 1960s sexual revolution, the book is also about a place.