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Item Barcode | Collection | Call Number | Status | Item Holds |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 33607000732837 | Adult Nonfiction | 978.6 BLEW | Searching... Unknown | Searching... Unavailable |
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Summary
Summary
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.
Author Notes
Mary Clearman Blew is Professor of English & Creative Writing at the University of Idaho, Moscow. She is the author of "Bone Deep in Landscape", "All But the Waltz", "Balsamroot" (University of Oklahoma Press) & "Sister Coyote: Montana Stories" & is coeditor of "Circle of Women: An Anthology of Contemporary Western Women's Writing".
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Reviews (2)
Publisher's Weekly Review
These powerful portraits span five generations of Blew's family's struggles to survive on the desolate ranchlands of central Montana, beginning in 1882. A bleaker view of home on the range is hard to imagine. Most of the men seem hopeless romantics, tragically flawed, while the women, who appear trapped in a he-man world, persevere--often heroically. To fiction writer Blew ( Runaway ) women like her schoolteacher grandmother and ranch-wife mother are the family pillars; her father and grandfather remain perplexing, despite her efforts to understand them. Blew concludes with a stirring description of her own ambivalent connection to this rugged part of the world. (Sept.) (c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved
Library Journal Review
Blew continues in the excellent tradition of Lambing Out (Univ. of Missouri Pr., 1977) and Runaway (Confluence Pr., 1990), recipient of a Pacific Northwest Booksellers Award. This collection of 11 stories centers on life along the cut banks of the Judith River in the Great Plains of central Montana. The river, little more than an alkali creek, is the locus for four generations. These stories spin cycles of hardship, bitterness, and death. Most are in the first person, revealing a unique woman's perspective of ranching life and expectations. Blew's style reflects the oral tradition of the tale. Yet her accounts never lapse into sentimentality, though some are clearly painful to tell. Similar in scope to Ivan Doig's Ride with Me, Mariah Montana ( LJ 9/15/90) and English Creek ( LJ 10/1/84) or William Kittredge's We Are Not in This Together (Graywolf, 1984), this is a haunting account of life in the West. Highly recommended.-- Daniel Liestman, Seattle Pacific Univ. (c) Copyright 2010. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
Table of Contents
| The Sow in the River | p. 1 |
| Reading Abraham | p. 13 |
| Dirt Roads | p. 39 |
| Leaving Montana | p. 57 |
| Little Jake and the Old Ways | p. 79 |
| Auntie | p. 101 |
| Getting Married | p. 121 |
| Going to Fort Peck | p. 137 |
| The Unwanted Child | p. 159 |
| January 1922 | p. 179 |
| All But the Waltz | p. 203 |