Quite Contrary: The Litigious Life of Mary Bennett Love
Texas Tech University Press 2014

Excerpt: “Partly by her voice, also by her dress, but primarily by her actions, Mary Bennett captured the attention of many of her contemporaries, on the overland trail and then in the localities where she lived in California. Many observers recorded their impressions, leaving us vivid descriptions. We can still hear her loud, profane speech. We can still see Mary, gargantuan in size, about six feet tall and more than 300 pounds, as she stands in a gunfight with Indians or provokes a water fight with her San Francisco neighbors. Observations of her dress are less vivid, and in the only extant photograph she is dressed conventionally. However, the women who met Mary often described her attire as amusing or humorous. To balance this, her contemporaries also recorded many acts of her kindness and generosity.”

Praise: “Early California’s socio-legal history has been told in general terms, but here we have an individual story of Mary Bennett Love, a working-class nineteenth-century woman, battling to protect her property. This is good stuff, and readers interested in early California or frontier history, women’s history, or legal history deserve to read about Mary Bennett Love’s amazing life.”
—Mark R. Ellis, author of Law and Order in Buffalo Bill’s Country: Legal Culture and Community in Lincoln County, Nebraska, 1867-1910

“David Langum has written a fascinating account of Mary Bennett Love, a woman large in both size and ambition.  Her schemes and ambitions, her lawsuits and her land-hunger, are played out against the backdrop of old California, as it made the transition from a small Mexican outpost to a booming American state.  This well-written and deeply researched book is a genuine contribution to Western history.”
—Lawrence Friedman, Marion Rice Kirkwood Professor of Law, Stanford University