To be a cowboy

the long version

"During a time of two world wars and a sluggish world economy, many Northern Europeans left their homelands for the American and Canadian West with visions of abundance and new life. Spanning a period from the late 1800s to the mid-1900s, To Be a Cowboy recounts the dreams and realities of a father and a son." "Otto Christensen came to North America in the early 1900s as an indentured farm worker from Denmark with a dream of becoming a successful farmer in The Canadian West. His son, Oliver, grew up on his father's farm during the Dirty Thirties and realized his dream of becoming a cowboy in the mid-1940s. As a rider at the Bar U Ranch - at this time, the largest, most successful ranch in Canada - Oliver eventually decided that the cowboy way of life was not for him. Based on oral history interviews, unpublished autobiography, and a treasure trove of family papers, To Be A Cowboy is a memoir that paints a portrait of a dying way of life."--BOOK JACKET.