Stranger and traveler

""She is one of the most beautiful proofs of that which a woman, without any other aid than her own free will and character, without any other power than that of her purpose and its uprightness...can effect in society." So wrote a contemporary Swedish novelist of Dorothea Dix, one of America's first and foremost women achievers. In an era when "ladies" did not mix in politics she single-handedly paved the way for far-reaching reform in the treatment of the insane and the retarded..." -- Dust jacket.