Across God's frontiers: Catholic sisters in the American West, 1850-1920

Roman Catholic sisters first travelled to the American West as providers of social services, education, and medical assistance.

Butler traces the ways in which sisters challenged and reconfigured contemporary ideas about women, work, religion, and the West; moreover, she demonstrates how religious life became a vehicle for increasing women's agency and power.

Moving to the West introduced significant changes for these women, including public employment and thoroughly unconventional monastic lives.