Historian Megan Kate Nelson, who spent her first 18 years in Littleton, Colorado, before moving to the Boston area where she has now lived for an equal length of time, challenges longstanding myths about the American West in her new book, “The Westerners: Mythmaking and Belonging on the American Frontier.” Nelson argues that much of the traditional narrative of western expansion—as a straightforward story of white settlers moving westward through rugged individualism—oversimplifies a far more complex history.

Nelson, whose work draws on a range of protagonists from diverse backgrounds, contends that the popular image of the West largely erases the varied peoples who shaped frontier life in the 19th century. “The frontier myth is a fantasy that white Americans have repeated over time to create a national community,” she writes, noting that it has marginalized or excluded the experiences of Native Americans, immigrants, and women.

Her book highlights seven figures who reflect the nuanced realities of the frontier, including the gold miner and newspaperman Ovando Hollister, the biracial fur trader and former slave Jim Beckwourth, the Northern Cheyenne chief Little Wolf, and Sacajawea, widely known for guiding Lewis and Clark but also recognized by Nelson as an explorer in her own right. Nelson also features immigrant experiences such as those of Chinese immigrant Polly Bemis and Canadian settler Ella Watson.

Among the figures Nelson finds especially compelling is María Gertrudis Barceló, a Mexican gambling saloon owner in Nuevo México who built a significant fortune as the queen of local monte tables. Barceló’s saloon became a well-known attraction for American soldiers and travelers, embodying the fusion of cultural and economic exchange characteristic of the frontier. Nelson describes Barceló as a “cultural broker” who adeptly navigated the multiple communities and shifting geopolitics of the region, standing out as a woman defying conventional roles and expectations at the time.

Nelson’s engagement with the American West is deeply personal as well as professional. After earning an undergraduate degree in history and literature from Harvard and a PhD in American studies from the University of Iowa, she lived in Los Angeles before settling in Boston with her husband. While focused on the history of the West and the South, Nelson expresses a strong affinity for Boston’s rich historical landscape, which she says remains vivid and accessible in everyday city life.

Nelson is scheduled to discuss “The Westerners” at an event Wednesday evening at the Boston Athenaeum, where tickets are currently available by waitlist. Her work contributes to a broader effort to reevaluate and expand understandings of the American frontier beyond the myths that have long dominated popular and academic accounts.