I will admit, I picked up Queen of the West: The Life and Times of Dale Evans by Theresa Kaminski with a sense of relief. Even though I knew Evans suffered personal tragedy in her life, I was looking forward to a mental palate cleanser after a month of reading books that took on tough topics from Black history. A biography of a Hollywood icon seemed like just the thing. Kaminski did not disappoint.

I went into the biography knowing very little about Evans: she was an image and a name but not much else.*

Kaminski creates a vivid picture of a complicated life. She introduces the reader to the often harsh realities of the music world, following Evans from local radio, to Chicago lounges, to Hollywood. She creates the picture of a career woman, who hid the fact that she had a child by her first marriage and yet championed traditional roles for women later in her life. She follows Evans through four marriages, ending with her decades-long marriage to Roy Rogers. She traces Evans’ attempts to create a career as a glamour girl, her success as a songwriter,** her initial reluctance to be cast in Westerns because female characters were typically overshadowed by their male co-stars, and her re-invention later in her life as a stalwart of the inspirational/Christian country music world. And she makes it clear that Evans was actively involved in shaping her career and her image every step of the way.

Much more than a singing cowgirl.

*I’m not sure I ever saw an episode of the Roy Rogers Show as a child. My local television station offered reruns of Sky King instead.

**Who knew? Not me!

Interested in learning more about how Kaminski researched and wrote Queen of the West?  Check out  this Q & A from March 2022: Three Questions and an Answer with Theresa Kaminski

* * *

Come back on Monday for six questions and two answers with K.S. Barton and Johanna Wittenberg, hosts of the podcast Shieldmaidens: Women of the Norse World