[at-l] First ADT Thru-hiker?

[jbullar1 at twcny.rr.com (Jim Bullard)]

Here's a book my wife spotted today. Anyone read it?

"Bold Spirit : Helga Estby's Forgotten Walk Across Victorian America"
Book Description
In 1896, a Norwegian immigrant and mother of eight children named Helga 
Estby was behind on taxes and the mortgage when she learned that a 
mysterious sponsor would pay $10,000 to a woman who walked across America.
Hoping to win the wager and save her family's farm, Helga and her teenaged 
daughter Clara, armed with little more than a compass, red-pepper spray, a 
revolver, and Clara's curling iron, set out on foot from Eastern 
Washington. Their route would pass through 14 states, but they were not 
allowed to carry more than five dollars each. As they visited Indian 
reservations, Western boomtowns, remote ranches and local civic leaders, 
they confronted snowstorms, hunger, thieves and mountain lions with equal 
aplomb.
Their treacherous and inspirational journey to New York challenged 
contemporary notions of femininity and captured the public imagination. But 
their trip had such devastating consequences that the Estby women's 
achievement was blanketed in silence until, nearly a century later, Linda 
Lawrence Hunt encountered their extraordinary story.