Bound like grass

the long version

... "Account of McLaughlin and her family's struggle to survive on their isolated wheat and cattle farm. She explores her roots as a descendant of Swedish American grandparents who settled in Montana with high ambitions. Her parents barely managed to eke out a living on their own neighboring farm with four children, two of them disabled. Mclaughlin reveals the cost of homesteading on such unforgiving land, including emotional impoverishment and a necessary thrift bordering on deprivation ... Yet in this bleak world poverty also inspired ingenuity, and a longing for a richer brighter life ..."--Jacket.