women reportedly enjoyed life together as family. Coman frequently traveled for her research on economic history; she visited Europe, the American West, Scandinavia, and Egypt. Bates accompanied her on many of these trips. Some scholars believe the two women were a lesbian couple. Breast cancer and death Coman first discovered a lump in her left breast in the fall of 1911 and underwent two surgeries in the following months. At the time, medical doctors did not understand the nature of breast cancer, its causes or its treatments, so the prognosis for Coman was poor. Coman died at home in January 1915 at the age of 58. At the time of her death, Coman was working on an industrial history of New England. During Coman's illness, friends of her and Bates—many of them also in "Wellesley marriages"—took Coman out for walks and visits, and invited her to stay at their country homes. They prepared meals for Coman and Bates, brought flowers and fresh vegetables, and performed tasks and services to keep Coman's spirits up. Bates chronicled Coman's illness in her diary, noting hospital visits, surgical procedures, and details about Coman's pain and suffering. According to cancer historian Ellen Leopold, in the days after Coman's death, Bates wrote a memorial to her that was designed to be circulated privately among the women's close friends and family. Leopold believes that the book, For Katharine Coman's Family and Innermost Circle of Friends, is the first breast cancer narrative in American literature. Near the end of Coman's life, the two women exchanged loving farewells through reciting poems and psalms to each other. Several years after Coman's death, Bates continued to mourn and to recall Coman's suffering. In 1922, Bates published a book of poems about Coman's illness, Yellow Clover: A Book of Remembrance. The book's title emerged from the fact that the "two Katharines," as the women were known, would send each other sprigs of yellow clover as tokens of affection. Assessment A review of Coman's book Economic Beginnings of the Far West: How We Won the Land Beyond the Mississippi (1912) in the San Francisco Chronicle stated that "the author is one of those new women who have shown what may be accomplished in the way of research by method and industry and a great deal of enthusiasm." In a 1913 review of her book, economist Thomas Nixon Carver praised Coman's narrative style and