When Montana and I Were Young: A Frontier Childhood

By: Margaret Bell

Sign Up Now! Already a Member? Log In
You must be logged into Bookshare to access this title. Learn about membership options, or view our freely available titles.

Synopsis: FROM THE BOOK'S BACK COVER: Lost for almost half a century and never before published, When Montana and I Were Young is a remarkable primary account of a child’s life in the early part of the twentieth century. Margaret Bell (1888-1982) was a rancher and horse breaker whose memoir tells the story of a frontier childhood on the high plains of Montana and Canada. Hers was not a typical childhood. Bell was barely seven when her mother died, and her stepfather, Hedge Wolfe, moved Bell and her three younger half-sisters far from their nurturing grandmother to the Canadian plains and a life of extreme poverty, hardship, and abuse. Mary Clearman Blew is a professor of English at the University of Idaho in Moscow. She is the author of Balsamroot and Bone-Deep in Landscape. Lee Rostad is the author of Honey Wine and Hunger Root. “Young Margaret (Peggy) displayed a dignity and resourcefulness that rank her among even fictitious literary heroines. Indeed, her very survival was amazing. . . . Both riveting and important, her book is a valuable addition to frontier narratives.” —Booklist “Bell practiced self-reliance and stoicism from an early age, and her memoir never lapses into self-pity. This powerful account belongs on the shelf of every student of pioneer history or women’s history.” — Publishers Weekly