Life on Muskrat Creek (eBook)

In this book Ethel Waxham Love and her son, geologist David Love, tell the fascinating story of their family's day-to-day life on an isolated ranch in early twentieth-century Wyoming. The interweaving of Ethel’s and David’s accounts of their experience on the Love ranch creates a unique memoir. Combining the perspectives of two genders and two generations, Life on Muskrat Creek provides a rich portrait of ranch life in the changing west.

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Written by Ethel Waxham Love, a Wellesley College graduate who went to Wyoming in 1905 as a teacher in a one-room schoolhouse, and her son, J. David Love, who later became an eminent geologist, Life on Muskrat Creek tells the fascinating story of a family's day-to-day life on an isolated ranch in early twentieth-century Wyoming. Readers will be held in suspense as they learn about the family's battle with a variety of challenges, including a near-fatal bout with Spanish influenza, life-threatening encounters with livestock and wildlife, and disastrous episodes of fires, flooding, blizzards, and drought. The book's depiction of more ordinary events is equally engaging; Ethel describes becoming a wife and raising children without the support of neighbors, women friends, or a wider family network, and David recounts growing up in a wild and remote place where there was no local school to attend. Readers from all walks of life will find Life on Muskrat Creek to be a lively and provocative book.