Great Plains Studies, Center for
Date of this Version
Fall 2011
Citation
Great Plains Quarterly 31:4 (Fall 2011).
Abstract
At a time when so many recent western women's memoirs either eschew the family farm or ranch as a bastion of male domination, or praise it as the fading location of authentic westernness, Ruth McLaughlin's memoir hits a new and sometimes heartbreaking note. Set in the High Plains of northern Montana, the memoir's dustcover photograph is riveting in its expressive ordinariness-and is a courageous choice to represent the lives within. Next to a barbed-wire fence, young Ruth, farm-kid skinny in oversized play clothes, gently pats a calf on the head. Behind them the landscape rolls on promisingly. Within the first few pages we learn that the calf has been separated from its mother to preserve her milk for the family and has worn the hair off his neck "from straining forward on his chain." ''After rubbing the staked calf's head a few minutes, I would grow impatient and pull away. It did not occur to me that we had stolen more from the calf than our breakfast milk and cream for French desserts." That theft, and others, haunt this memoir.
Comments
Copyright © 2011 Center for Great Plains Studies, University of Nebraska.