In These Hills (Paperback)

~ (Author), William Kittredge (Foreword)

Editorial Reviews

Review

Winner of the WESTAF Award for the Best Creative Non-Fiction published in the year 2000. -- Western States Book Awards --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

Review

"[A] moving tribute to Western rural life."-Clark Whitehorn, Montana Magazine (Clark Whitehorn Montana Magazine )

"A celebration of the ordinary, day-to-day life of a small operation farmer/rancher/writer, who, just because of the circumstances, because a sort of jack-of-all-trades. . . . Thanks to Ralph Beer's sincere and meaningful essays all of us can preserve a bit of our Montana memories and dreams."-Montana Senior News (Montana Senior News )

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Product Details

• Paperback: 180 pages
• Publisher: Bison Books (June 1, 2003)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0803262094
• ISBN-13: 978-0803262096
• Product Dimensions: 9 x 6 x 0.4 inches
• Shipping Weight: 9.3 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 5.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (5 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #468,746 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

9 of 9 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Essays finely crafted as a log barn or a good fence, December 29, 2003

By	Ronald Scheer "rockysquirrel" (Los Angeles) - See all my reviews (TOP 100 REVIEWER)    (REAL NAME)

Ralph Beer is one of my favorite Montana writers. In both fiction and nonfiction, he's hard to beat. This collection of short essays describes his life as a rancher outside Helena, Montana. Many of them are humorous and rich with Western wit; some have a melancholy undertone; all are very finely crafted.

Working a ranch that has been in his family for four generations, Beer slowly comes to terms with the futility of maintaining a lifestyle that can no longer be justified as a way to make a living. As cattle prices fail to meet the rising costs of running a ranch, it is finally only humor, sentiment, self-respect and the well-worn romance of the rural West that keep him going. Beer's wonderful essays chart the gradual decline of ranching, even as he puts in new fences and throws himself into the yearly rounds of upkeep and improvements.

Meanwhile, many of Beer's essays use humor to deromanticize the Western mystique. A trip into town becomes an occasion to reveal himself as a fish out of water. The descriptions of ranch work often reveal him struggling with uncooperative equipment and stock, often in brutal weather. A tongue-in-cheek discourse on pickups explores the special kind of love affair between men and their trucks.

Other essays are rich with boyhood memories of his father and grandfather and the friendships of men who have been long-time neighbors and mentors. Some essays are celebrations of skills and craftsmanship no longer appreciated, the building of a log barn by his great-grandfather, the work of a hayfield irrigator, his own reconstruction of an old snowplow, the way a natural horseman rides a horse. In these, the essays become a balancing between a sense of people and times slipping into the irretrievable past and an embrace of what is still there to be cherished in moments of grace and pride.

Many thanks to the University of Nebraska Press for keeping this wonderful book in print. May it find the many readers it deserves. For a sample of Beer's excellent fiction, get a copy of his novel "The Blind Corral," which tells a story very similar to his own, about a Vietnam veteran inheriting a family ranch.

5 of 5 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars What a wonderful book this is., July 19, 2006

By	J. M. Alexander (Texas, USA) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

I got this book from a friend a while back and just never really picked it up, but boy am I glad I finally did. Ralph Beers' prose is beautiful, and his descriptions of a way of life that's passing away are fit to bring tears to my eyes.

If you have any interest in the West, especially the contemporary Western way of life, I recommend In These Hills very highly.

2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars In These Hills, June 7, 2007

By	Anna M. Benson "Anna" (USA) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

This man is a wonderful author and gives an authentic depiction of life as it was in that time era and under those conditions. We were neighbors with the Beers when I was growing up and truly,life was hard but good at the same time. The sense of neighborliness has gone by the way of subdivisions but I believe the author managed to capture the dying spirit of what was good and wholesome about the life that was led from the original homestead on. I would recommend this book to anyone.