Welcome! This website will acquaint you with Betty Jean Steinshouer's nearly thirty years on the Chautauqua circuit. As she winds down her many years on the road, the aim is to leave audio and written records of each of her characters, as well as her work as a Fellow in Florida Studies at the University of South Florida. After over twenty years of research and writing on a book about twelve authors exploring the Land of Flowers in Florida Journeys, she took time off in 2018-19 to complete her Cather book, Long Road from Red Cloud, which won Book Fest's International Book Award for Biography in 2020.
 Here is a review from Audible:
"Inspiring, eye opening  What an amazing book, on many levels. Helps one understand Cather’s life and open your eyes to aspects of the human experience often kept hidden. Have a bit of patience at the beginning of the book to get familiar with the characters and the times. Highly recommend this book."

Long Road from Red Cloud is  available on audio, ebook, and in print paperback. A hardcover library edition is underway and in 2022 will enter library distribution channels for the audio and ebook.

Letters to Bolivar is a collection of Steinshouer's newspaper columns in her hometown paper, the Bolivar Herald-Free Press, circa 1981-84. Rambunctious at the time, now it would be unprintable for what it said about preachers and politicians.

Florida Journeys (which includes TWELVE women authors who had a relationship with the Sunshine State between Reconstruction  and Apollo Eight) is also going to rile some people . A Virtual Chautauqua is underway on each author: Harriet Beecher Stowe, Constance Fenimore Woolson, Sarah Orne Jewett, Laura Ingalls Wilder, Marjory Stoneman Douglas, Zora Neale Hurston, Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings, Edna St. Vincent Millay, Rose Wilder Lane, Elizabeth Bishop, Anne Morrow Lindbergh, and Rachel Carson. Subscribe below for updates and progress reports, or just send Betty Jean a message.