Yet it is also a convincing portrait of a profusely warm and tough-minded woman who was widowed three times.

They are both tough-minded women, cultural icons known by first name only.

The two tough-minded Hakka women glared at each other in mutual respect, and as they did so, Mrs, Ching made her decision.

In fact I knew her for a tough-minded young woman with feminist leanings and rather more interest in student politics than would be helpful in her academic work.

Now the woman was back, the tough-minded woman who stepped into the circle and danced.

The pampered young girl he had met had been annealed by her odyssey into a tough-minded woman.

Steve Hamilton writes the kind of stories that manly men and tough-minded women can't resist.

She is also, like the president's mother and another influential adviser, Karen P. Hughes, a tough-minded woman brimming with self-confidence.

Clearly, Bernice Morgan, for all her warm voice and hospitable manner, was a tough-minded woman.