Harvey Girl - Paperback

by Sheila Wood Foard (Author)

Wanted: Young women, 18 to 30 years of age, of good moral character, attractive and intelligent, as waitresses in the Harvey Eating Houses on the Santa Fe Railroad in the West. Good wages with room and meals furnished. Liberal tips customary. Experience not necessary. Harvey Girls served gourmet meals to passengers of the Atchison, Topeka, and Santa Fe Railway. During the late 1800s and the first half of the 1900s, Harvey Houses were a familiar sight to train travelers in the American West. There were one hundred Harvey Houses and about a hundred thousand Harvey Girls over the years. In a time when there were limited career choices for women, becoming a Harvey Girl offered rare independence for young ladies. In 1919 one such Harvey Girl is feisty Clara Fern Massie, an Ozark farm girl who runs away from home on her fourteenth birthday after standing up to her harsh father. Heading west and taking a job as a waitress--a Harvey Girl--the underage Clara struggles to learn the demanding "Harvey Way" and shed her farm-girl image to become a confident, independent woman.

Author Biography

Sheila Wood Foard devoted years to researching and writing about the Harvey Girls. As a docent at a Harvey House in New Mexico, she interviewed former Harvey Girls to get their stories firsthand. A former English and journalism teacher, Foard is a writing instructor for the Institute of Children's Literature and the author of the teen biography Diego Rivera. Her stories, articles, and poems have appeared in numerous children's magazine. She lives in Missouri.