Product Description: At a time when values of frugality, home, family, and care of the land seem increasingly absent, one woman looks to her past to create a life of significance for her family. Her search takes her back to the prairie of her grandmothers, who survived personal hardships and lived off what the land provided...read more

Product Description: Book by Nesbitt, John D.

"Letters of a Woman Homesteader" is a frontier classic by Elinore Pruitt Stewart, a widowed young mother who accepted an offer to assist with a ranch in Wyoming. In Stewart's delightful collection of letters, she describes her homesteading experiences to her former employer, Mrs. Coney. Stewart's charming descriptions of work, travels, neighbors, animals, land and sky have an authentic feel. The West comes alive, and everyday life becomes captivating. Stewart's writing is clear, witty, and entertaining. Clear as a bell, concise yet comprehensive, replete with localisms and skillfully rendered frontier humor, it makes one want to toss the PC and reference library into the trash and move to some unspoiled wilderness. The 26 letters are brief and tell about her life on the ranch in the early 1900s. The author frequently and unnecessarily apologizes for being too wordy; she begs forgiveness for many "faults," like being forgetful, ungrateful, inconsistent and indifferent, all without apparent cause. On occasion, language reflects the racial prejudice of the time. Many times in "Letters of a Woman Homesteader" Stewart attempts to portray the culturally diverse characters she meets by writing their various dialects as they sound. Elinore Pruitt Stewart was a remarkable woman. After enjoying this book, readers will be equipped with a whole new view of not only life in the early 20th century but of the impact woman had on it. Readers of "Letters of a Woman Homesteader" may also enjoy the film made from it, "Heartland." Elinore also wrote "Letters on an Elk Hunt", as well as many short pieces for periodicals of the day.

The author presents a portrait of three generations of her family in the rural West, their links to the family's Wyoming ranch, and the loss of their rural lifestyle