The rich stories of great women are often lost to history. Their achievements are in a vein that ill fits the genre of heroic male biography that has predominated for centuries. They slip quietly from this life leaving their greatest achievements in the hearts of those who have known them. Their stories must be gleaned from those they have touched and from the fragments of their lives saved in drawers and cupboards, private diaries, and records. Their achievements are measured in terms of inner strength and beauty, the evidence of which is seldom tangible. Ina Pruitt was a great woman. Born in a shack on the Western frontier of the U.S., she struggled against the odds to educate herself. In college she was a free spirit. She married for love and became a devoted mother. Raising four children in desperate poverty, she forsook personal aspirations until the task was complete. She suffered with courage and silence the plights common to women: miscarriage, childbirth, kidney infections, vaginal cancer, hysterectomy, osteoporosis, glaucoma, blindness, and heart disease. Her special triumph is seen in her art, inspired by the wilderness that she loved, expressing a beauty that transcended her life experience.Her adult life was spent along Oregon