An Owl on Every Post

Sanora Babb experienced pioneer life in a one-room dugout, eye-level with the land that supported, tormented and beguiled her; where her family fought for their lives against drought, crop-failure, starvation, and fathomless loneliness. Learning to read from newspapers that lined the dugout's dirt walls, she grew up to be a journalist, then a writer of unforgettable books about the Great Depression and the Dust Bowl. The author was seven when her parents moved from the security of a small town to homestead an isolated 320 acre farm on the western plains. She tells the story through her eyes as a sensitive, fearless young girl who came to love the wind, the vastness, the mystery and magic in the ordinary. This memoir of a pioneer childhood on the Great Plains is written with the lyricism and sensitivity that distinguishes all of Babb's writing. With its environmental disasters, extreme weather, mortgage foreclosures, harsh living conditions, it resonates as much today as the period it depicts a hundred years ago. What this true story of Sanora's prairie childhood reveals best are the valuescourage, pride, determination, and lovethat kept her family from total despair. Sanora Babb was the author of five books and essays, short stories, and poems that were published in literary magazines alongside the work of William Saroyan, Ralph Ellison, Katherine Anne Porter, and William Carlos Williams. "An unsung masterpieceI was completely blown away by it. . . .Her ageless story deserves a permanent place in our nations's literatureArnold Rampersad, English Professor Emeritus, author of Ralph Ellison: A Biography "The lyricism of Sanora Babb's writing defines the luminous and transcendent landscape of this extraordinary memoir....On a par stylistically and thematically with Willa Cather's My Antonia, this is a classic that deserves to be rediscovered and cherished for years to come."Linda Miller, Professor of American Literature, author of Letters from the Lost Generation, chairman of the Advisory Board for Cambridge Edition of the Letters of Ernest Hemingway.