Book
Description
Born
in 1918 in Fort Benton, Montana, Nedra Sterry has crafted
a powerful memoir of life on the Montana prairies and
a childhood defined in equal measure by poverty and grace,
hard work and family ties. The daughter of hailed-out
homesteaders, Sterry grew up in a succession of very
remote one-room schoolhouses in northern and central
Montana, where her mother, a teacher, eked out a living.
Sterry married a wheat farmer and raised
five children of her own on the Montana Hi-Line, and she
learned young to take pleasure where she found it: in porcupine
hunts, Saturday night dances, well-told stories, and the
meadowlark's song. Clear-eyed and decidedly unsentimental,
Sterry traces her family through the homesteading boom,
the Great Depression, World War II, and the postwar advancements
brought by rural electrification. In doing so, she offers
remarkable insight -- and a woman's perspective -- on
family, work, and life in 20th century Montana.
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Reviews
"I
realized as I finished reading that I had been holding
my breath. This author really knows how to tell a story." -Cai
Emmons, author of "His Mother's Son
" 'When the Meadowlark Sings' should take its place among the very best
Montana memoirs." -David McCumber, author of "The Cowboy Way"
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