Heroes don’t just live in the pages of graphic novels. And author Dana Glossbrenner proves just that with her fascinating true story of good women who can’t be kept down.

While members of the First Christian Church in San Angelo, Texas, know that their stained glass windows are quite old, they don’t know the women to whom the windows are dedicated—Annie Tankersley, Mary Jane Metcalfe, and Ellen Osmer Farr.

Thanks to extensive research and a special knack for storytelling, Glossbrenner introduces readers to the tragedy and triumph these women experienced as they made their way through the early days of San Angelo’s founding in the late nineteenth century.

From Annie’s role as the first white woman to permanently settle a family in the Concho Valley of West Texas, to Mary Jane’s solo journey southward after leaving her husband in an asylum, to Ellen’s position as the first female postmaster in San Angelo, these three women bucked the conventions of their times to make their way through a world that didn’t quite know what to do with them.

Readers will be captivated by their exciting stories, as natural disasters, divorce, death, and mental illness wreak havoc on their lives—and fuel their determination to make a difference in their small Texas town.