A widowed homesteader is determined to make a life in the unforgiving mountains of late 19th century Oregon in this “powerful novel of struggle and loss” (Dallas morning News).
Acclaimed author Molly Gloss drew on pioneer diaries and old family stories to write this modern Western classic of a solitary woman’s frontier life. In the 1890s, Lydia Sanderson leaves her old life behind and journey’s to Jump-Off Creek to make her way as a homesteader. Enduring the hardships and deprivations of Oregon’s high mountain country, Lydia finds both courage and community in her determination to survive.
This “unsparing portrait of pioneer life, recounted simply and without romanticism” displays an “intimate understanding of the harsh physical conditions” of the Western frontier, as well as the methods and practices that made such conditions livable (Publishers Weekly).
