When Montana and I were young

the long version

"Lost for half a century and never before published, When Montana and I Were Young is the rarest of finds, a remarkable primary account of a child's life in the early part of the twentieth century. Margaret Bell (1888-1982) was a rancher and horse breaker whose memoir tells the story of a frontier childhood on the high plains of Montana and Canada. Hers was not a typical childhood. Like Mari Sandoz in Old Jules, Bell introduces us to a new villain in Western literature: the stepfather. Bell was barely seven when her mother died, and her stepfather, Hedge Wolfe, moved Bell and her three younger half-sisters far from their nurturing grandmother to the Canadian plains and a life of extreme poverty, hardship, and abuse. Never asking for pity, Bell matter-of-factly describes the details of her extraordinary life."--BOOK JACKET.