Sod and Stubble

This book is out of this world. So realistic. The author tells about his ancestors who settled a portion of Kansas (I presume under the Homestead Act) and made a life for themselves. It rates up there, in a different genre, with Willa Cather's "My Antonia". Both of which have vaulted into my favorite books... Both occur after the Indian Wars for that area (and I am indeed sympathetic to the Native American situation, but the point is these settlers were not participants in that conflict; they arrived afterwards). They helped make a country from "nothing" as they found it into "something", before the rural flight of the Dustbowl & Great Depression years when their children or grandchildren would migrate back to cities for industrial jobs. Perhaps a 60 year period (?). This is a (now) little-remembered, and poorly understood, part of Americana that ought to be taught more often.

Part of my family settled in Kansas not far from Ise's in the same period. They never mentioned how hard the life was for most people. The majority of settlers, in fact, failed. Some died from disease or accidents, others simply discovered that farming was not as lucky or simple as they had been led to beleive. The climate was against them. Finances and the market were as much luck as anything. If they didn't draw the best of land as a homestead, it was pretty much a no-win situation. Ise's plain spoken story illuminates the situation well. It's an eye-opener.

"Over the years, I have recommended this book to hundreds of people in all walks of life and of almost all ages. Many have declared it to be the most informative and most interesting book they have read about Kansas history. The new material Rothenberger has located will add substantially to its value."--Leo E. Oliva, author of Woodston: The Story of a Kansas Country Town"A first-rate edition. The annotations are informative in content and graceful in style."--Susan J. Rosowski, general editor of The Willa Cather Scholarly Edition

This book does a wonderfull job of depicting the struggles involved in raising a family & building a farm on the great plains. Just 3 or 4 generations ago many of our own families were living the same life as the Ise's.

You can get so lost in this story that you will laugh and cry with the family as they go through the years.through birth and death rain and shine you will enjoy every line of this book.I got a real feeling of what it must have been like to settle the country, and the early years of this century. now that we are leaving the 1900's in the space age learn what it started out like.