Chaucer’s Books will host author Jim Wilke for a book talk and signing of “Frontier Comrades: From the Fur Trade to the Ford Car,” 6 p.m. Thursday, Jan. 22 at the bookstore, 3321 State St., Santa Barbara.

“Frontier Comrades” examines six accounts of lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender lives on the frontier of the American West.

Each account interprets this history through experiences that take place in different parts of the West, moving chronologically from the fur trade era to the dawn of the automobile age, Chaucer’s said.

Wilke provides the first comprehensive accounts of figures such as transgender stage driver Charley Parkhurst; transgender Seventh Cavalry laundress Mrs. Noonan (also known as Mrs. Nash); and Clara Dietrich and Ora Chatfield, known by the contemporary press as “lady lovers.”

“Frontier Comrades” also offers glimpses of individual personalities, among them the cool, detached grandeur of William Stewart as he traversed the West during the fur trade era; stubborn determination of Charley Parkhurst after California’s gold rush; and the hidden passions of Tombstone Sheriff William Breakenridge for a Vanderbilt and a local rustler.

“The maelstrom of opportunities and conflicts that made up the West affected lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender westerners in intrinsically personal ways. The accounts in ‘Frontier Comrades’ provide an intimate yet expansive view of the American West,” Chaucer’s said.

Wilke is a former curator of technology at the Autry Museum of the American West, and is a consulting historian on railroad and Western history for numerous organizations. He is the coauthor of “Stagecoach! The Romantic Western Vehicle.”