A true story of the women who worked in Fred Harvey's chain of restaurants along the Santa Fe railroad depicts pioneer women with wage-earing power

The story of the pioneering women who worked as waitresses at Fred Harvey's restaurants along the railway from the 1880s through the 1950s.

Graphic Novel. They're cute, they're clever and they're obsessive! Some of Harvey Comics' biggest stars were three "little" girls with large dreams, enormous hearts and king-size laughs: Little Audrey, Little Dot, and Little Lotta. Audrey was a Paramount Pictures animated cartoon movie star, who became a major comic-book headliner in 1948. Her comic-book stories were filled with ingenuity and her spunky, proto-feminist antics rivaled those of her cartoon progenitor, Little Lulu. The strangely obsessive Little Dot has become a cult figure through the years. Her love of dots and her unique coterie of eccentric uncles and aunts became the basis for some of the funniest stories in comic-book history. Last, but hardly least, is Little Lotta who defied the "big" girl stereotype with adventures showcasing an incredible strength that equaled her insatiable appetite.

In 1919, fourteen-year-old Clara Fern Massie runs away from her family's farm in Missouri to earn a living and find adventure as a Harvey Girl, one of the waitresses who worked at Harvey House restaurants along the railroads in the Southwest United States.

In the early 1880s when conventional wisdom decreed that working women were socially inferior and morally suspect, an English gentleman brought the first of thousands of young women to the American West to work in restaurants along the Santa Fe Railroad line. Preferring the term Harvey Girl to waitress, Fred Harvey recruited single women between the ages of eighteen and thirty to work ten-hour days serving four-course meals in under thirty minutes at Harvey Houses from Kansas to California.Harvey Girls usually lived above the Harvey Houses and were chaperoned by a house mother. Their uniforms were modest, makeup and jewelry were forbidden, and each Harvey Girl signed a year-long contract. In exchange for these stringent rules, a Harvey Girl enjoyed room and board, railroad passes, and job security. In the seventy-year history of the Harvey Houses, more than one hundred thousand women proudly wore the black-and-white uniform of the Harvey Girls.Far from Home is the first of two volumes of paper dolls that feature the authentic uniforms and fashions of the day worn by the Harvey Girls. The text is presented as journal entries, and the historic fashions are based on the holdings of the Arizona State Capitol Museum.Step back in time with Mayetta and Christine as they leave their childhood homes and begin new adventures as Harvey Girls in the 1890s: July 1893: What a flurry of activity and excitement today! Fred Harvey himself came to Las Vegas. He climbed off the train and onto the platform and right into the lunchroom. Everyone knew who he was immediately and scurried to make our service extra good. He spoke with all the girls (even me!) and told us we were doing a fine job. The only complaint I heard was about the orange juice in the cooler. He poured it down the drain and told the cook it had to be freshly squeezed for every meal.For more in the paper doll history of the Harvey Girls, see The Golden Era: West by Rail with the Harvey Girls.

Recipes from the original "In Harvey Service" column in the Santa Fe Railroad magazine and the employee magazine "Hospitality" published in the 1940s and 1950s intersperced with the history of the restaurants.