The Prairie in Her Eyes

Book excerpt: Framing her recollections with the passage of cranes over her South Dakota ranch, Daum writes about the difficulties of living in a remote place--a fickle river, rattlesnakes, hospitals too far away to be much use, social isolation--but also what keeps her there--the cranes, the rhythms of the land & seasons, her horses, the bonds of family. Unflinching and understated, Daum breaks the silence that for too long has marked (and marred) the lives of western women. Her essays start in the present (she raises sport horses on a piece of what was a 13,000 acre spread) and cycle back through her childhood, with stories about her father, blizzards, a coyote, the White River that whipsaws their land, the differences between people, and the artifacts left by others who have tried to scrape a living out of the land. With humor and insight, her essays touch on different aspects of rural life and convey her vision for a good life in the west.