Lost for almost half a century and never before published, When Montana and I Were Young is a remarkable primary account of a child's life in the early part of the twentieth century. Margaret Bell (1888-1982) was a rancher and horse breaker whose memoir tells the story of a frontier childhood on the high plains of Montana and Canada. Hers was not a typical childhood. Bell was barely seven when her mother died, and her stepfather, Hedge Wolfe, moved Bell and her three younger half-sisters far from their nurturing grandmother to the Canadian plains and a life of extreme poverty,...
Lost for almost half a century and never before published, When Montana and I Were Young is a remarkable primary account of a child's life in t...
In this series of linked stories the child narrator, Veve, cannot fathom all the mysteries of her family's life together, but by watching and listening she pieces together a painful past. Played out against the backdrop of rural hardship and deprivation on the family's Kansas farm, the secret in her father's previous life eventually explains his harsh treatment of the three older children and her mother's bitterness over his countless misunderstandings and slights. When originally published in 1931, a reviewer of Black Cherries commented that there is "a sharpness about all impressions in the...
In this series of linked stories the child narrator, Veve, cannot fathom all the mysteries of her family's life together, but by watching and listenin...
The Curlew's Cry is the story of three decades in the life of Pamela Lacey and a Montana town. Descended from pioneers and the daughter of a rancher, Pamela lives according to her own script, and nothing seems to happen as expected. The world beats on--World War I, the influenza epidemic of 1917, the Great Depression--and local fortune rise and fall with the price of beef. For Pamela the fight that counts is defined by a sense of independence and pervasive loneliness, by the twists and turns of love and friendship. Mary Clearman Blew is the acclaimed author of Runaway, All But the Waltz:...
The Curlew's Cry is the story of three decades in the life of Pamela Lacey and a Montana town. Descended from pioneers and the daughter of a rancher, ...
More than a quarter of a million Americans crossed the continental United States between 1840 and 1870, going west in one of the greatest migrations of modern times. The frontiersmen have become an integral part of our history and folklore, but the Westering experiences of American women are equally central to an accurate picture of what life was like on the frontier. Through the diaries, letters, and reminiscences of women who participated in this migration, Women s Diaries of the Westward Journey gives us primary source material on the lives of these women, who kept campfires...
More than a quarter of a million Americans crossed the continental United States between 1840 and 1870, going west in one of the greatest migrations o...
Great-granddaughter of homesteaders in north-central Montana, Mary Clearman Blew grew up in one of the last vestiges of the rural frontier. Her girlhood chores--hauling water and rounding up cattle--were remote even to her town-bred classmates in the forties and fifties. It was a girlhood she now recalls realistically, with affection but without nostalgia.
Many others have written about this land, its people, and its history, and Blew examines portrayals of the West in some of their writing, including B. M. Bower's Chip of the Flying U and the novels of Dorothy M. Johnson and A. B....
Great-granddaughter of homesteaders in north-central Montana, Mary Clearman Blew grew up in one of the last vestiges of the rural frontier. Her gir...
In language reminiscent of the wild beauty of Big Sky Country, the author gives readers a glimpse into the lives of her family as she traces their connection to Montana's natural and human landscape. Beginning with her great-grandparents' arrival in 1882 in Montana--still a territory then--Blew relates the stories that make up her life. Illustrations.
In language reminiscent of the wild beauty of Big Sky Country, the author gives readers a glimpse into the lives of her family as she traces their con...
Melding past and present into a moving narrative, Blew re-creates the dry, sparsely populated Montana of early homesteaders where her aunt chose to live. She writes of her yearning for independence, her marriage choices and recollections of her daughter. A blend of history, diaries and local legend.
Melding past and present into a moving narrative, Blew re-creates the dry, sparsely populated Montana of early homesteaders where her aunt chose to li...
The short fiction of Mary Clearman Blew, set in Montana, reflects the brutality of the region as seen in the mountains, the severe weather, and the personal hardships of the people living there. In each of these seven stories, the characters, driven to hurt or be hurt, reflect a range of violence--in their interaction with each other, their relationships with animals, or the effect the harsh environment has on their lives. Whether the turmoil is external (the snowstorm in "Lambing Out") or internal (the sisters' memories in "Paths unto the Dead"), its toll on the person touched is clear...
The short fiction of Mary Clearman Blew, set in Montana, reflects the brutality of the region as seen in the mountains, the severe weather, and the...
Mary Clearman Blew's aunt Imogene Welch embodied the hard-working values of depression-era western America. In "Writing Her Own Life," Blew builds a narrative around excerpts from the diaries Imogene kept during World War II while she taught in rural Montana schools and later in Washington State. Through her diary entries we learn of the war's effects on Imogene as she moved from rural, family-centered life in Montana to independent if somewhat lonelier life in Washington State.
After growing up on an impoverished homestead in Montana, Imogene enjoyed the modest comforts of living in a...
Mary Clearman Blew's aunt Imogene Welch embodied the hard-working values of depression-era western America. In "Writing Her Own Life," Blew builds ...
Fire has always gripped our imaginations. To quote Mary Clearman Blew, "It warms us, frightens us, and entertains us." In "Forged in Fire," Blew and coeditor Phil Druker have assembled twenty gifted writers who explore the element from various perspectives.
Living as they do in a state that nearly every summer faces the threat and challenges of wildfire, Idaho writers are exceptionally well equipped to recount firsthand experiences. Featuring essays by both established and novice writers and including two prize-winning stories, "Forged in Fire" covers topics from escaping forest fires...
Fire has always gripped our imaginations. To quote Mary Clearman Blew, "It warms us, frightens us, and entertains us." In "Forged in Fire," Blew an...
