Mary Clearman Blew’s education began at home, on a remote cattle ranch in Montana. She graduated to a one-room rural school, then escaped, via scholarship, to the University of Montana, where, still in her teens, she met and married her first husband. This Is Not the Ivy League is her account of what it was to be that girl, and then that woman—pressured by husband and parents to be the conventional wife of the 1950s, persisting in her pursuit of an education, trailed by a reluctant husband and small children through graduate school, and finally entering the job market with a PhD in English only to find a whole new set of pressures and prejudices.This memoir is Blew’s behind-the-scenes account of pursuing a career at a time when a woman’s place in the world was supposed to have limits. It is a story of both the narrowing perspective of the social norm and the ever-expanding possibilities of a woman who refuses to be told what she can and cannot be.

Product Description: The departed men in her life still have plenty to say to Corey. Her father, a legendary rodeo cowboy who punctuated his lifelong pronouncements with a bullet to his head, may be the loudest. But in this story of Montana—a story in which the old West meets the new and tradition has its way with just about everyone—it is Corey’s voice we listen to...read more

Product Description: paperback, solid binding, clean text, solid binding, no creases

Topics ranging from escaping forest fires and smoke jumping to fighting house fires and making campfires are featured in this collection of essays--by a number of talented Idaho writers--that explore fire from various perspectives. Original.

Diaries of an unmarried schoolteacher in World War II-era Montana ranch towns and small Washington cities capture rural life and the steadfast tenacity of an independent woman.

Recently discovered after being lost for nearly fifty years, this memoir of a Montana childhood at the turn of the century invites readers into the life of a Western horse ranch.

The author shares memories of her family and of growing up in the Big Sky country of Montana (view table of contents)

Product Description: The short fiction of Mary Clearman Blew, set in Montana, reflects the brutality of the region as seen in the mountains, the severe weather, and the personal hardships of the people living there. In each of these seven stories, the characters, driven to hurt or be hurt, reflect a range of violence--in their interaction with each other, their relationships with animals, or the effect the harsh environment has on their lives...read more (view table of contents, read Amazon.com's description)

Product Description: Book by Blew, Mary Clearman (view table of contents, read Amazon.com's description)

Product Description: Melding past and present into a moving narrative, Mary Clearman Blew imaginatively recreates the dry, dusty, sparsely populated Montana of the early homesteaders and of her aunt Imogene’s young womanhood. Striving to understand why her aunt chose a life alone, away from the ranch where she grew up, Blew evokes the rigors of her own growing-up years...read more

Product Description: Great-granddaughter of homesteaders in north-central Montana, Mary Clearman Blew grew up in one of the last vestiges of the rural frontier. Her girlhood chores--hauling water and rounding up cattle--were remote even to her town-bred classmates in the forties and fifties...read more

Stories set in a small town in Montana focus upon the conflict of men and women with a harsh and unyielding landscape. (view table of contents)

Product Description: In language reminiscent of the wild beauty of Big Sky Country, Blew gives readers a glimpse into the lives of her family members as she traces their connection to Montana's natural and human landscapes. Beginning with her great-grandparents' arrival in 1882 in Montana, she relates the stories that make up her life...read more

A collection of stories, poems, and essays includes works by Tess Gallagher, Marilynne Robinson, Pam Houston, and Terry Tempest Williams (view table of contents)

The author shares memories of her family and of growing up in the Big Sky country of Montana

Brief stories survey the complexities of growing up in the Mountain West

Fourteen stories deal with the lives of men and women in contemporary Montana, as they struggle with the weather, physical adversities, and the dying myth of life in the West