According to the Author's note at the end of the book this book is about the author's grandmother. She died when the author was eight. The book repeats the oral history that she learned through many stories told by her grandmother, Lily Casey Smith and her mother Rosemary Walls. Because she made up details that she did not know she calls it a novel even though it essential is a first person autobiography.
The book starts off with a bang as Lily and her two siblings as young children are caught in a flash flood and survive by climbing a tree and clinging on so they do not fall into the raging flood waters. One of the positions in the tree is relatively easy being a fork in the tree. Another requires holding on tight. There are stuck in the tree for many hours, overnight I believe, until the waters receded enough so the current was weak enough that they could wade to dry land. Lily offered words of encouragement to her siblings and had them rotate positions so they all survived.
As a young child Lily helped her Dad turn half broke horses into highly trained carriage horses.
The book follows Lily's life from this young age through boarding school which she resisted through the birth of her grandchildren including the author. Lily hated boarding school and loved the ranching life and outdoors. Lily at age 15 I believe gets a job 500 miles away teaching in a one room school house. She leaves home and makes the journey during the heat of the Sumner on horseback. Starting early in the morning and stopping when it got really hot and proceeding when it got cool and until it got dark. Much of the time she travels without seeing anyone. She meets a woman going her way and travels with her. She wakes up in the middle of the night with the woman going through her saddlebag looking for something to steal. Lily gets on her horse and proceeds down the trail at night alone.
She enjoys her job as teacher, but is let go after someone with more education comes along. Throughout the book she losses teaching jobs because she is so strong willed and goes against the establishment. In one case she continues to preach that the girls can do anything they want which goes against the Mormon polygamist society where she is teaching. According to Lily they wanted to train young women to be docile and become "breeders." In another she goes against her local sheriff when she punishes his son. The son makes inappropriate advances to girls in the class including her daughter. When she catches him putting his hand up the dress of a young Mexican girl she is enraged and beats the sheriff's son. She admits that she went too far, but in her mind she needed to correct his behavior. He was a half broke horse.
The book tells of her life as s young woman when she is living in Chicago and meets and marries a guy that it turns out is already married. This makes her suspicious much later in her life when her husband is working a warehouse job where he spends a lot of time with a female bookkeeper who she thinks wants to be with her husband. With the help of her daughter she spys on him and finds no wrong doing. As she continues to spy she gets caught. Her husband Jim who is faithful to her says, time for us to move away from the city back to the country. Which they do.
One memorable part of the book for me is when they plan to get an indoor flush toilet. Someone says, isn't that unsanitary. Who would ever want a crapper in their house.
I enjoyed the book. I will likely read her other book that is basically a memoir.
