In the 1500s, there were thought to be one to two million people in what became the United States. By 1800, that number had grown to more than five million, and by 1900, to 76 million.

Leah Angstman

Those early centuries were times of great change in this country. European colonization was followed by the Revolutionary War. More wars followed—with Great Britain, Mexico and Spain—and the country itself was divided during the American Civil War. These were centuries shaped by exploration, innovation and expansion with a budding transportation system and growing economy. The nation was growing and reshaping itself both physically and ideologically.

What was it like to live in those times?

Leah Angstman answers that question in Shoot the Horses First, a rich tapestry of short stories featuring a cast of characters all making their way as their country grew. Angstman, who lives in Boulder, leads her readers through 16 short stories, some of them brilliant snapshots, barely two pages of deft storytelling. Others are long enough that they leave you hungry for the full-length novel version.

The author calls her stories “histories” and herself a historian first, then an author. She backs up that approach in this collection with historical details that teach her readers and immerse them in her characters’ lives while they are entertained.

Angstman’s stories transport readers into vastly different times in the past, often letting the story and the details reveal the location and time frame.

The author has said in interviews that the longest piece in her book, a novella titled “Casting Grand Titans,” is her favorite thing she has ever written. It tells the story of a brilliant young woman botanist, Agatha Acton, who was kept from getting a degree, a higher salary and the recognition she deserved, because she was a woman.

Acton has created a modest life for herself, teaching botany in a windowless shack to girls, with a budget of pennies at the (State) University of Iowa in the mid-1800s. The dean over her program calls it “ladies’ gardening.” She knows it to be botany, and she perseveres with no budget and no support. When she discovers a new species and is asked to write a paper about her finding, it is stolen from her and appears in print with three male professors’ names at the top.

“Grand Titans” is one of several stories in this collection that give detailed glimpses into the lives of women in times of change. In another longer piece, “A Lifetime of Fishes,” a young woman named Grace Hewitt is rescued from a shipwreck by members of the Wampanoag nation on the East Coast and must choose between the life she thought she wanted in relative high society, and the life she was given by the Wampanoag.

Angstman flexes her historian muscles with this tale, using early spellings from the Wampanoag language for her characters’ dialogue and, in her historical notes, she cites several resources regarding their language in the 1600s.

“In the Blood” tells a quick, lively tale of a doctor who gives an injured man a blood transfusion that goes wrong. “Take this down,” the doctor says to an assistant. “Dog blood not compatible. Next time, use a sheep. A lamb is calm. That might run in the blood to gentle a thrashing man.” Angstman doesn’t give this story a timeframe but writes in her notes that it was based on early-European blood transfusion experiments which began in the 1600s.

“The Light Ages; or Holes in the Heart,” is a beautifully written romantic story of a young woman, her body and her musical talent stricken by stroke and hidden away from the world by her parents. When an errant baseball from a nearby practice field sails through her window, Julie Fisher meets baseball player/fellow musician Meriwether Capp. Meri had followed the path of the ball and offered to pay for the damaged window. After he was told no one was in the room the baseball entered, he left the house. But on his way out, he saw and heard a young woman in that window. Angstman writes, “She was real, he knew. He’d stayed long enough to satisfy his curiosity, but she wasn’t his business. He turned to go, and then the night filled with an exotic music. Like a violin, but heavier, huskier. The throat of a humming bison. The vibration of bees. Geese, wings scything, migrating south into a glass jar.”

Angstman’s work has been widely praised and she has won over 10 awards for Shoot the Horses First, including the Shorts Award for Americana Fiction. In past interviews, she has said she is striving to create a new genre of writing that bridges literary and historical writing. In her efforts, she touches on race, religion, the aftermath of war, feminism, disability and other topics that give readers not just a hard-to-put-down book, but an eye-opening glimpse into the past and its people.