A conversation with Sherry L. Smith about her book Bohemians West: Free Love, Family, and Radicals in Twentieth-Century America (Hey Day Books, 2020). Explore more at www.sherrylsmith.com.

Sherry L. Smith is University Distinguished Professor of History (Emerita) at Southern Methodist University. In Bohemians West: Free Love, Family, and Radicals in Twentieth-Century America (Hey Day Books, 2020), Smith tells the story of the interwined lives of Sara Bard Field and Erskine Scott Wood, who were married to others when they met in 1910 in Portland, but negotiated and built a life together on the philosophy of free love, mutual respect for one another, and shared passions for poetry and politics. Smith is a master historian and grounds Bohemians West in expert research, but she gracefully narrates a story with such literary grace that readers might forget the rigorous methodology hiding beneath the surface. Thus, general readers  will be captivated by an engaging narrative of intimately details lives, and historians will rejoice in finding a carefully-researched told with such literary flare.

Explore more of Smith's work at www.sherrylsmith.com. Some is also author or editor of the following titles:

• Sagebrush Soldier: Private William Earl Smith's View of the Sioux War of 1876 (University of Oklahoma Press, 1989)
  

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 Podcast Notes:

• Host and Producer Brenden W. Rensink is Associate Director of the Redd Center, an Associate Professor of History at BYU, General Editor of the Intermountain Histories project, and author of the 2018 book Native but Foreign: Indigenous Immigrants and Refugees in the North American Borderlands. Links to other publications and projects here: https://linktr.ee/bwrensink