This Storied Land: A Montana Memoir

Having been born in extreme SE Montana, the life described was similar even if the "Others" was not. A lot of their day to day experiences brought back my Grandparents life....I have shared this book with others who come away with the same feelilng - great book.

After hearing stories about my Mother spending her childhood summer in Plentywood MT. this is a pleasant companion piece to read.

Plentywood, Montana, situated 20 miles from Canada and 20 miles from North Dakota, needs someone to bring again to life the triumph and travail, success and hardship, dewdrops and hailstones, beliefs and blasphemies, windmills and windstorms, breezes and blizzards, homesteads and haunts, childplay and chores, weddings and wakes, romance and routine, cowpaths and coyotes, whispers and wails, that reside and resurface in the memory of the hardy people who have scratched its stubborn soils with hoe and plow. Now, finally, comes a talented writer who tells all of this so well. She is my cousin, and since her life and stories overlap mine, I admit I am prejudiced in her favor. As a fellow native of Plentywood I also admit to being incurably loyal to my birthplace. However, just take my word for it. If you have never seen Sheridan County, Montana you will still feel these stories tugging at your heartstrings. If you are so lucky as to have been born there I know you will not be able to resist reading this book. -- Paul Abenroth, Walla Walla, WA

This book was a pleasure to read and re-read. The prose is beautiful-melodious and clear. The picture of a time (childhood and adolescence) and a place (Montana) contains layers of memory and imagery. Each chapter presents a discrete aspect of life on a farm in Montana, while the entire work holds the tension of familial secrets, revealed at the end. I delight in this book because of its style and content and recommend it most highly. I'll be using it in a writing class as a model of composition.