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Riding the White Horse Home: A Western Family Album
The daughter and granddaughter of Wyoming ranchers, Teresa Jordan gives us a lyrical and superbly evocative book that is at once a family chronicle and a eulogy for the land her people helped shape and in time were forced to leave. Author readings.
Paperback, 240 pages
Published
May 31st 1994
by Vintage
(first published April 6th 1993)
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This book really hit home with me. It captures a part of the west, and the way westerners become their own community, their own family, and their own country separate from the rest of American culture. Dealing with this separate-ness on a daily basis on the ranch can sometimes be a conflict, and this beautifully-written story helped me remember that the way western people feel about their lives, their land, and their job can sometimes be so far from where you are. I'm a westerner too, but I've m...more
I liked this memoir that I just happened upon on the 'free shelf' of a
used book store. It's sat quietly and patiently in my house for
several years, until last week.
I think I picked it up and subsequently held on to it because it's about the American West, specifically Wyoming, near Cheyenne, which is a part of the country I know of, but not experientially for a long period. Besides being a woman, and writing inclusively the stories of women - family and community members - she's also my age (b...more
used book store. It's sat quietly and patiently in my house for
several years, until last week.
I think I picked it up and subsequently held on to it because it's about the American West, specifically Wyoming, near Cheyenne, which is a part of the country I know of, but not experientially for a long period. Besides being a woman, and writing inclusively the stories of women - family and community members - she's also my age (b...more
This is a reread for me. It's a lovely book, written by a woman who had the childhood I always wanted (roughing it on a ranch in Montana with lots of horses) but who lost it under the economic pressures that spelled the end of small ranch life. It's a gritty book, with calving and branding scenes not for the weak fo stomach, and lots of late night talks over coffee and cigarettes (neither of which I enjoy, but Iwhich make good reading somehow).
I also like Jordan's descriptions of how ranch life...more
I also like Jordan's descriptions of how ranch life...more
this has been on my shelves for awhile and is one of several memoirs of women in the west that I have collected over time ... each from different eras.
While I enjoyed this memoir and was moved by the experiences, losses, and changes experienced over the course of the story. I still don't know that I was fully absorbed by it though and it took me awhile to complete since I wasn't being compelled by the narrative.
While I enjoyed this memoir and was moved by the experiences, losses, and changes experienced over the course of the story. I still don't know that I was fully absorbed by it though and it took me awhile to complete since I wasn't being compelled by the narrative.
Read it several years ago while working in the book store (it was a used copy) and I loved it, wrote up a small blurb and stuck it on the front counter.....it sold, came back, sold, etc. A moving book about the west and the demise of ranching as it once was in this country. Highly recommend the book.
Here's another one where I'm not quite sure how I feel. It was beautifully written, but was less a story and more a collection of family memories (hence the title, I suppose). I've read a lot of "western" books lately and I have to say that, although this one was good in its own way, my favorite has been "Half Broke Horses" by Jeannette Walls.
This memoir of a family farm in Wyoming and the generations that lived there is a delight - Jordan paints detailed and engaging pictures both of the landscape and the people who lived there - it's a short collection of essays that hang together beautifully.
Good book about my very part of Wyoming (southeastern) and its old ranching families and their history.
A great book with insight into the hardness, sadness, and joy of the western ranch / pioneers.
Writes of her family on a ranch in Wyoming -- wonderful descriptions and wording
Read my review at my blog.
How farm and ranch life shape a person, a family, a community. Social commentary on bigness, mechanization, leaving things behind and finding new things about old things.
I just reread this in preparation for a literary day trip with some of my colleagues. We're going to Iron Mountain, where Teresa Jordan's family ranched for 4 generations. I had sort of forgotten how much I love this book and how much it resonates with my experience growing up on a family farm in Idaho. Reading it this time I really thought about the way you don't really value a place until you either leave or lose it.
We read this for Book Club. It was actually an interesting book. I didn't hate it, but I didn't necessarily like to read it! It took me a long time, since I didn't have a very large desire to read it. We found out that to really appreciate this book you have to 1)be from a small town in Wyoming, 2) have family that are/were ranchers, or 3)Like to read about ranchers and Wyoming.
This book is beautiful. It is a personal family memoir about the women in the author's life. It is touching and beautiful. The descriptions of life on a ranch are very enticing. It made me want to live on a ranch and also inspired me to write some family history.
This book was wonderful. I can't really describe the feeling I felt while reading -- getting these beautifully written, intimate glimpses into her life. I finished wanting more.
Great book! Very poetic the way she blended her personal history with the spirit of the west and the dissappearing way of ranching.
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Excellent memoir .. I am torn between giving it four or five stars. In my mind, it's more of a 4 1/2.
This was a beautiful book . . . wish I hadn't lost it. It's worth a re-read.
Jan 31, 2010
Theresa
is currently reading it
I kind of gave up on this one. I just couldn't get in to it....
An engrossing memoir of growing up female on a Wyoming rancch
1 and a hlf stars. Read in a book group
Mar 07, 2013
Terry
marked it as to-read
Feb 19, 2013
Bitsy
marked it as to-read
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“I once ran across a list of nearly 400 winds from around the world and wondered why Wyoming, so dominated by wind, has so few names for its variations. . . . There's the wind, the damned wind, and the goddamned wind.”
—
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