Homestead (The World As Home) [Hardcover]

Annick Smith (Author)

Book Description

Series: The World As Home | Publication Date: March 16, 1995

Describes how the author and her family built a wilderness homestead in 1959 Montana that grew into a flourishing ranch and recounts the many adventures that found their roots in early American western and pioneering traditions. IP.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

Coproducer of A River Runs Through It and executive producer of Heartland, Smith has lived in Montana for more than 30 years. With her husband, Dave, and their four sons, she moved to a ranch near the Big Blackfoot River. It fulfilled their dreams, though they knew Dave had a fatal heart disease; he died at 41. Smith recalls her childhood in Chicago as the daughter of Hungarian emigres, likening her move westward to that of her parents. She offers vivid descriptions of the landscape, of adventures large and small. Smith writes about backpacking into the Bob Marshall wilderness, about her friendship with Norman McLean (who wrote A River Runs Through It) and about her efforts to preserve the land. A joyous celebration of wilderness. Author tour.
Copyright 1995 Reed Business Information, Inc.

From Library Journal

A filmmaker, writer, and widow, Smith lives in remote Montana. From this perspective, she discusses the loss of love, of wilderness, of time. But her overriding message is about the preservation of both personal memories and wild surroundings. These essays, which were previously published in various magazines but have been expanded here, cover cowboy history, the Big Blackfoot (the river featured in A River Runs Through It, which Smith coproduced), snow, fishing, family, and other themes. Some parts of the essays are redundant, but overall this is a worthwhile addition to collections on Montana and large nature collections.?Nancy Moeckel, Miami Univ. Libs., Oxford, Ohio
Copyright 1995 Reed Business Information, Inc.

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 211 pages
• Publisher: Milkweed Editions; 1st edition (March 16, 1995)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1571312064
• ISBN-13: 978-1571312068
• Product Dimensions: 8.7 x 5.8 x 1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 14.7 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 4.6 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (8 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #2,737,902 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

7 of 7 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A cosmic breath from the Mountains..., December 4, 1999

By 

Andrea V. - See all my reviews

This review is from: Homestead (The World As Home) (Hardcover)

I have read and loved all of those important voices in Montana's literary world: Dick Hugo, William Kittridge, Ivan Doing...but always wondered if there was someone representing my specific experience in the modern west. Annick Smith's HOMESTEAD is still echoing off of the top of my 6' body weeks after I turned the last page. She tells of being a woman who lives in the frontier of western Montana at the end of this century. She is a mom, a wife, a lover, a naturalist, a thinker, a writer, and an artist. She may be my mother's age, but she transends the generations and seems to to hold a steady voice across my generation, too. HOMESTEAD comments on life like a friend comments on a personal thought over a good cup of coffee. Take this book to bed with you on a long winter's night and read while the house is silent & dark...

6 of 6 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars A river runs through it, July 13, 2003

By 

Ronald Scheer "rockysquirrel" (Los Angeles) - See all my reviews
(TOP 500 REVIEWER)    (REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Homestead (The World As Home) (Paperback)

Annick Smith has woven together material from a dozen or so short pieces published 1988-1994, and the result is this collage of memoir and travel writing. Settling near Missoula, Montana, in 1964, Smith was married to a university teacher and hopeful film writer, who died of heart failure, leaving her with four young sons. Adopting Montana as a home, she writes about the 163-acre "homestead" of the book's title, raising her sons and entertaining friends in a log house transported there from where it had been abandoned on a property 30 miles upriver.

Actually, a river runs through this book. It's the Big Blackfoot River, the same one that figures in Norman Mclean's story about fly fishing and family. Maclean, in fact, lives close by, and she comes to know him, eventually becoming a guiding force behind the film adaptation. (She shares credits as co-producer with fellow writer and friend Bill Kittredge, and the film's director, Robert Redford. She has also produced the film "Heartland," set in frontier Montana. Her twin sons Alec and Andrew have become filmmakers in their own right, writing and directing "The Slaughter Rule," also set in Montana.)

Smith's book meanders casually across a variety of topics. There are accounts of the Montana seasons, a local band called the Mudflaps, the work of brand inspectors, her Hungarian Jewish parents who live in Chicago, summers with her two young sisters on the Michigan shore of Lake Michigan, travels to Spain and Alaska, fishing and hiking, celebrity friends, family gatherings on holidays, Montana wildlife, the Nez Perce, and the environmental impact of mining and clear cutting.

I recommend this book to anyone with an interest in Montana, the outdoors, Western living, and a certain 1960s spirit that survives among the graying hippies who once fled into what was then the wilderness. I also recommend Gretel Ehrlich's "The Solace of Open Spaces," about a California filmmaker who visits Wyoming and decides to stay.

3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Daughterhood, wifehood, motherhood, and place-making, July 5, 1999

By A Customer

This review is from: Homestead (The World As Home) (Paperback)

Our book group read and loved this book. So much to think about and discuss -- a sort of female "River Runs Through It," because of its sumptuous references to occasions -- the food, the drink, the making of gatherings. The group admired Smith's extraordinary courage -- taking a young family abroad, bearing twins overseas, undertaking family life on a remote 163 acres of Montana's wildest. They loved her language: a "solitary dune girl" now "summer's white-haired child." This is an earthy, generous, candid, poetic story -- of universal appeal.