Kansas pioneer women tell their stories; Pioneer Women, by Joanna L. Stratton. Introduction by Arthur M. Schlesinger Jr. New York: Simon & Schuster. A Touchstone Book. 319 pp. $8.95.

In the attic of her grandmother's home, Stratton found a file of 800 autobiographies of Kansan women, solicited by her great-grandmother, Lilla Day Monroe, a 19th-century suffragist, lawyer, and publisher. The book contains excerpts from the collection, examples of women who stood stubbornly against the tough challenges of Indian raids, prairie fires, cyclones, grasshoppers, and, above all, loneliness. Rare pictures from the Kansas Historical Society as well as the author's files solemnly remind us of the role these women played.