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by T. Louise Freeman-Toole |
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| There is a ranch that runs for several
miles along the last free-flowing stretch of the Snake River. A beautiful
but harsh environment, hellishly hot in the summer and cut off from the
outside world for much of the winter, the area is also in the middle of
two equally harsh controversies: one over the breaching of the dams on
the lower Snake and the other concerning new land management plans in Hells
Canyon. T. Louise Freeman-Toole, a sixth-generation Californian, moves
to a small Idaho town, little suspecting how profoundly she will be affected
by her new life and surroundings. Her frequent visits to the last homestead
ranch on the middle Snake River and her friendship with the eighty-year-old
ranch owner and his daughter lead her to discover the spirit of the West
and her own place there.
With deft and evocative prose, Freeman-Toole takes us along as she and her son round up cattle, fix fences, hike, kayak, meet bears, elk, and sturgeon, and encounter rural traditions and values that force her to reexamine her own views on environmentalism, the treatment of animals, property rights, child rearing, and death. Whether investigating her family's roots in Los Angeles, exploring the threats that tourism, recreation, population growth, and sprawl pose for Hells Canyon, or chronicling her ten-year romance with the rugged and spectacular landscape, Freeman-Toole is an able guide to the fraught territory where old ways and new realities, fierce loyalties and political passions, and memory and longing uneasily meet. |
Standing up to the Rock by T. Louise Freeman-Toole University of Nebraska Press, 2001. Order a copy. |
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