"We four Kelton boys were rich. It was not because we had money, for we didn't. Money was always a short commodity in the 1930s and early 1940s. We were rich because we got to do for free what many people would have been glad to pay good money for, to live on a ranch with horses and cattle and cowboys."
So begins Elmer Kelton's story about what Christmas was like on a ranch in far West Texas during the Great Depression. Actually, he experienced Christmas on two ranches--the one where his father was foreman, and the one his paternal grandfather operated. His grandparents' home lacked...