Customer Reviews

Leaning into the Wind: Women Write from the Heart of the West

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As a ranch woman who lived many years in South Dakota, the anthology truly amazes me for its capacity to speak clearly about the heart and souls of plainswomen. The women wrote their stories with passion that credits the authenticity of their varied subjects. The authors exposed the west in black and white, yet showed the gray complexities. The land, as one writer said, holds you in a way nothing else can. The reader learns that an appreciation and respect for the land is paramount if one is to cope with extreme weather, cyclical income--often below the cost of doing business, relationships made uneasy by common community knowledge of generations living in the same place. Individuality, as shown by the diverseness of the authors' experiences, is the key to holding one's own in an oftimes hostle environment. Truly the weak don't survive. "Leaning..." shows the strength and fortitude necessary for life on the high plains and also the compassion brought on by the witnessing of a prairie in bloom, an astonishing star lit sky or the newborn's arrival. One sees clearly the growth that can come from intimate association with life and death. The honesty of life is on every page.

It got a bit repetitive though - I mean, ALL those stories of calving were a bit excessive. I bought this book during my first visit to the High Plains last week on my spring break in South Dakota. I enjoyed most of the stories - I didn't think they were all particularly and equally wonderful, but with so many writings you will have likes and dislikes. I did wish, however, that I could talk to some of these women and let them know that not all vegetarians and animal-rights activists hate ranchers. We're not all hippy-dippy airheads who don't know the real story of animal farming - the hard work and even love that goes into the raising of animals. It's just a difference of opinion regarding the sanctity of _all_ life. I felt attacked, quite a few times, while reading this book. Overall though, there were very inspiring stories and quotable quotes - "Pay a holy kind of attention" !!! Loved that one.

To start this book is to start a trip into one's own past. Whether we now live in the country or in a city, many of the stories told here are within our own familys' histories; I can feel my own German immigrant grandparents, farming on the plains of Eastern Colorado, within these pages.

The sheer eloquence of these plains women - their poetry and tales - tells much of the strength of the human spirit. I wept with them as they tell of the rigors of drought and the Depression; laughed with them as they tell of childish pranks; and prayed with them as they lived through weather we can only imagine today, snugged, cocooned, and protected as we are from the elements.

I would wish every high school American history teacher would include this in their curriculum. To have history not only educate, but entertain, is a rare treat. It is our roots that make us strong - just as the wheat that grows upon these same high plains.

The format is outstanding for its message: short essays and poems. One can chew off just as much as is right at any one time, without feeling that the tale has been interrupted. The eloquence of these prairie women, the beauty of their imagery, was a constant delight - even when their eloquence was manifested purely by sheer simplicity.

Real women are all around us, but we are so used to seeing through the spectacles of our stereotypes that we don't always recognize them. The editors of this grand and courageous anthology, three ranchwomen who got fed up with the way Western women are imagined ("slim blonds in tight jeans on prancing palominos, or musclebound heifers who look and smell like old leather"), have given us the Real Thing--and we all ought to be enduringly grateful.

Leaning Into the Wind is an amazing collection of writing by women of the High Plains, a chorus of distinctive voices, each speaking her own strong language. In it you will read about milking, lame horses, cowmoms, and sleeping with the pigs. You'll hear chilling descriptions of wind and winter, the poetry of coyotes, a recipe for bug spray--and throughout, the voices of extraordinary women working, loving, mothering, living.

The editors sifted manuscripts from 550 women in six Western states--"a tower of submissions twelve feet high" that included photo albums, letters, handwritten pages, diaries, and more--to give us this collection. And a marvelous collection it is, with sections such as "Growing into the Land," "Pay a Holy Kind of Attention," and "The River of Stories."

But the only way to tell you about this rare book is to give you a taste of it. Here are a few bits and pieces to whet your appetite for more:

"I could have used a warm breeze instead of the icy wind. Or grass underfoot--that would have been easier to walk over than powdery snow and frozen manure. But most of all, I could have used a glimpse into the future the day we decided to double our beef herd."--Audrey A. Keith

"My Aunt Mary told me that she never saw my mother sit down unless she was breast-feeding one of us. She did not have the time or energy to care for so many children. After five years on the North Dakota homestead my mother was committed to an asylum in Jamestown, where she died three years later...In the asylum, my mother gave birth to her seventh child, a daughter. Friends of the family adopted her."--Ann Vontz

"I carry the ranch inside me. I can close my eyes and see every sticky weed around our house, the gopher holes, the path to the coal house and the privy. And I can feel my feet on the path as I run barefoot from our house to the ranch house where the corrals wedge against the cottonwoods that line the river."--Phyllis Luman Metal

"I've loved good men and rode good horses."--Karen Obrigewitch

"Just give me a vaccine gun in each hand and stand back!"--Jody Strand

These stories ring with authority, truth, anger, fear, sadness, longing, strength. They are the authentic stories of women whose lives are living testimony to the way the roots grow in the sweet soil of the High Plains, under the shadow of the mountain, "between God and the ground." They show us that Earth can be enough, and teach us how to live our lives in the spaces between necessity and hope.

Susan Wittig Albert
for Story Circle Book Reviews
www.storycirclebookreviews.org

This book was given to me by a friend, when I was laid up for three months due to a riding accident. Most people don't know it - but hearty women like the ones referenced in these stories are still alive and well and working today. My hats off to you ladies - because the computer and cell phone era don't change a thing when it comes to getting up cattle, riding herd and fixing fence, feeding stock, even when you are not well. The work still has to be done. Livestock know no sick days!

Very well written. The stories were short, sweet, touching, informative. They tugged on your heart. They made your imagination kick in. They made you appreciate (or should have made you appreciate) what you live with today. I think women truly bear the soul of the earth. It made me laugh, and cry.

If you are interested in life in the western United States during the first half of the twentieth century, you will want this book. The same is true if you enjoy stories of how women coped and mastered the challenges of life in rural America. The memoirs and poems contributed by over 200 women are also of sufficient literary value to warrant attention. There are tales of fun, loss, adventure, sadness, achievement, and the fullness of life. It is a great book to keep on your end table, reading a few pages at a time and masticating on them before nibbling off another morsel. A capsule biography for each contributor is a tremendous addition. Reading this book is enormous fun. Be aware that the editors of "Leaning into the Wind" followed it with "Woven on the Wind" and you will want both of them

This book was amazing, it really portrayed what we do and who we are, and sort of held a comfort that we're not alone. I loved it, and recommend it to anyone!

another grand compilation of essays, poems, and stories from real lives. I suggest buying Woven in the Wind and Crazy Woman Creek for hours of intelligent reading.