I ordered this book after being assigned excerpts from it in a literature class. The excerpts changed my life. The book was different, but even better than the little bits I had read. It's about the turn of the last century from a woman's perspective. It gave some insights on early feminism and the suffragettes that I had not expected, which were fascinating. I love how she simply tells her story, without propagandizing for a point. And it was wonderful to read about how my home state, California, looked a hundred years ago.

This book discusses, in very personal terms, faith, motherhood, marriage, careers, family, and wonder of nature. I highly recommend it.

Being new to the life and times of Mary Austin, I found this book captivating. Credit goes to Augusta Fink for one of the finest biographies I have ever read.

There are few books I dislike, but this book was one of the few that came close. While I enjoyed some of Austin's imagery, it seemed she went around in circles and never get to a destinaton. It was like reading a bunch of settings, but never getting any plot. The highlight of the book was Seyavi, the basket maker but the book itself seemed to be lacking. If you're looking for nature writing, read Linda Hogan's "Dwellings." It's a lot more personal.

I used to live write down the street from Mary Austin's old house in the Owen's Valley. I found her life very interesting and maybe from reading this book you get more of an inside on what her life was like.

Austin lived in the Owens Valley during a turbulent period at the turn of the century, and she observes the people and wild things dwelling there with a novelist's eye. But what sets this gem above all the rest is simply her writing, the plain beauty of her voice and phrasing. She achieves a tone that is somehow at once wistful and tinged with levity, very gently ironic yet always loving. Her words caress their subjects like -- well, like the pen and ink drawings that graced the original publication in 19-ought-whatever. They evoke all the richness of the place, its austerity, its pathos, its beauty, with a gentle affection that is sweet but never cloying, sometimes sad but never downcast. It has a kind of Zen translucency, filtered through the gently humorous, sensitive lens of a literary genius.

This voice is loving if you're a horse, sheep, cow, dog, antelope, sheepherder, or cowperson. But, Goddess help you if you're a mountaineer, hiker, camper, easterner, urbanite, or Sierra Clubber. Perhaps John Muir does need some dethroning, but blame him for the industrialization of Yosemite National Park? Come now.

It is not often, in my experience, one has the opportunity to say, "I read the most sharply fascinating book about cows this past weekend." Not that I said this sort of thing after reading this book, but I could have. Barney Nelson performs at minimum two premier services for her readers. First, she reopens the cow case, teasing into gray complexity the traditional assignation of cows to the realm of domestic beasts. Second, Nelson continues a rehabilitation of fame for the early twentieth century writer of the West, Mary Austin.(This rehabilitation comes at the expense of John Muir over the issue of sheep herding and lambing.) Truly, after reading this book I think it is curious that the remarkable Austin is in need of reputation refurbishment in American letters.

The glory continues with the author adding a raucously noble essay on her own life. Nelson also contributes a fine essay on Ed Abbey's reading and suggested usage of Mary Austin's desert book. At last, I mention the political concerns churned up by Nelson's hearty ploughing. Much about land management, grazing rights, and habitat change finds sensible reappraisal. I do not have the expertise or experience to evaluate the suggestions of the author on this matter, but I find her suggestion of interest, that the government policies based on the research programs of some scientists are quite possibly informed by an erring sense of healthy land use and a mistaken foundational origin for the data they interpret. Overall, this book of essays wafts thoughtful chips into the air with relatively little theoretical marsh.

Nelson is a creative thinker and fresh voice injecting new ways of looking at the environment, women's place in nature, and ultimately how to reconcile our dependence upon domestic livestock. By delving into works of Thoreau, John Muir, Jack London, Ed Abbey, and the lone female voice of Mary Austin, Nelson shows how our thinking about the wild, the domestic environment, and the place of men and women in both has been shaped by assumptions that are not true. I enjoyed this book very much--there are lots of new ideas to consider, as well as plenty of research to back up Nelson's points. She writes clearly and smoothly, and is not afraid to tackle ideas that westerners have misunderstood for too long, livestock grazing for one. I was not at all familiar with the work of Mary Austin, but thanks to Nelson I can see that she should be widely studied for her environmental writings, particularly pertaining to women's role. All women, all environmentalists, all westerners, should read Nelson's book, it will be the basis for many conversations, if not debates.

Originally written in 1904, these tales weave together the lives of the son of homesteaders and a Paiute Indian, the Basket Woman. The stories are straightforward enough, and often incorporate Paiute tales; the author was respectful of Paiute culture and her local environment, so these stories rarely offend our modern sensibilities. Still, these aren't going to grab every kid's attention, and would be best recommended for a quiet, thoughtful reader with an interest in Native American culture at the turn of the century.

One of Ours begins as vintage Cather, you can feel the sun on your face and the soil under your feet. The characters are real and people you know. The troubled protagonist, Claude, is sympathetic. Why not? There's something of him in all of us. Unfortunately, the book falls apart when he enlists as a doughboy and ships to France.

Cather once stated that she experienced everything that ever went into her writing by the time she was 15. Clearly that didn't include the Western Front. The second half of the book, based on her research and interviews with WWI vets, is not her experience and it shows. The events and descriptions are shallow and superficial, and felt more like an outline, without flesh and blood. The book was a disappointment.

Though you begin to realize where this story is headed early in the novel, you are not quite prepared for where it takes you. It is heartbreaking, and Willa Cather does not beat you over the head with that. The story begins in Nebraska- this is where Cather exhibits her best writing in the story. Her description of our hero's lament is sincere in its vaguery. His feeling of entrapment spills over to the reader. Ms. Cather loses some of her magic when he goes off to The Great War. While we imagine that his sense of entrapment in Nebraska is lifted, we never really feel the emotional evolution that we expect he is going through. In addition, the first three quarters of the story contain a complicated familial element to which we never return.

In the end, where we knew we were headed, we long a little bit for the entrapment of our hero's Nebraska, but feel a little bit liberated by his new freedom.

This novel represents the heroic struggle of one individual against farming, social ambition, marriage and war.

Although strong and capable, farming is the worst profession imaginable for this red headed hero. Willa Cather shows every respect for the hard honest life of a Nebraskan farmer, but Claude makes a hard honest fiasco of the farming life. This book is the story of a soul. A strong daring soul that needs to wrestle something bigger than itself (even if it loses). Claude begins by trying to manage his father's farm. When he spends a few years at college, he is shown the world of social ambition, but neither of these experiences set his life on the right path. If you are interested in the dynamics of male/female relationships, Claude's marriage provides plenty of food for thought. Willa Cather chose a very interesting backdrop for her hero when she describes the home front of these two very black sheep.

This book may be the most realistic description of middle-west sentiment during the first world war. It describes the emotions of Americans who volunteered to fight for people they had only met via the black and white media of newspapers. The war becomes a sort of crusade, and Claude feels compelled to answer the call. Willa Cather gives a wise description of the issues, and even expresses the sentiments of honest German farmers in Nebraska. Claude's best friend is from the Bohemian old country, and doesn't quite agree with Claude's choices.

This book has received quite a few reserved reviews. I recommend this book without reservations.