The story of Narcissa Whitman held endless fascination for Debra Gwartney. Whitman, the first white woman known to cross the Continental Divide, set up a mission near present-day Walla Walla in the 1830s, and died at the hands of the Cayuse people.
Debra Gwartney reports feeling like an alien as a child in Idaho, and she draws the two stories together in her bookI Am a Stranger Here Myself.
We hear how the details of Whitman's life and mistakes helped the author better understand her own choices, in this interview from 2019.