Nothing to Do but Stay: My Pioneer Mother [Paperback]

Carrie Young (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: July 1, 1993

This daughter's loving tribute to her pioneer mother tells of a real heroine who traveled by herself to North Dakota in 1904, to stake a lonely claim and start a farm on 160 empty acres before she married and began her family.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

In eight enjoyable anecdotal essays, Young describes the challenges and rewards of 20th-century pioneering life in North Dakota. Photos.
Copyright 1993 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

From School Library Journal

YA-- Readers are treated to history at its liveliest in these eight essays. Young tells of her pioneer mother's early westering experiences and those of herself and her five siblings. Like Laura Ingalls Wilder, she admits to the hardships of pioneering after the turn of the century but accentuates the positive aspects. She tells of her mother's 1904 trek to North Dakota to homestead alone and explains that the woman was a successful landowner of 320 acres when she married and began her family. This is a natural read-aloud for secondary history classes, and it offers excellent examples of personal essays for journalism and English classes. It's a terrific read for everybody.
- Barbara Hawkins, West Potomac High Sch . , Fairfax, VA
Copyright 1991 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Paperback: 176 pages
• Publisher: Delta (July 1, 1993)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0385313659
• ISBN-13: 978-0385313650
• Product Dimensions: 6.9 x 5 x 0.6 inches
• Shipping Weight: 4.8 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 4.8 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (9 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #716,846 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

Discover books, learn about writers, read author blogs, and more.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

12 of 12 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars You can go home again!, March 20, 1998

By 

[e-mail] (Kent,Wa) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Nothing to Do but Stay: My Pioneer Mother (Paperback)

I loved this book. It took me back to my childhood. So many of the events described in this book were familiar to me as a native of North Dakota, the threshing crews, the meals, the clothes frozen on the line in the winter. It is a hard and demanding place to live. Nothing came easy in North Dakota. I loved the people in this book. They worked so hard to pull a living out of this land and to see that their children were educated. They were honest and true friends to their neighbors, paid debts, perservered against years of hardship. I always told my mother she should have written a book. Well she never did. I think this is as close as I will ever get to that wish. I hope everyone will take a look at this book to get a glimpse, true and untarnished of what people in North Dakota and life in North Dakota was like in the first half of this century.

7 of 7 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars this was a GREAT story, March 26, 2003

By A Customer

This review is from: Nothing to Do But Stay (Paperback)

I stumbled on this book in a used book store. It is the amazing story of the author's parents and their life in rural North Dakota. The book has adventures, anecdotes, and gives the reader a real sense of how families existed in the early 20th century. This was a very entertaining story, although perhaps you can't tell from this review. None of us who have read it could put it down, from my 78 year old mom to my sister who is reading it to her 7 year old daughter.

7 of 7 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars An amazing story about a frontier Mom!, February 15, 2002

By 

Frances D. Granatino (Malvern, PA United States) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Nothing to Do But Stay (Paperback)

I loved this book. Its a compendium of short pieces about the author's mother, who was a frontier woman with a wonderful outlook on life. I also loved the descriptions of her husband, who had to drive the children through snow, to get to their respective schools, and the descriptions about how the kids were settled in the schoolhouse overnight, while wild mustangs banged against the door. I don't know about you, but I'm not sure I would send my children to a schoolhouse way far away, with food for a week. Can you imagine what they did after school let out... all by themselves? I wanted to hear more about this. The descriptions of quilting are wonderful.It is a great book if you are in the mood to feel cold, hungry, and in North Dakota with the snow beating down upon you. Also if you enjoy descriptions of sumptuous meals at holidays, replete with Norwegian recipes!