Short Season: Story of a Montana Childhood

From Library Journal
A married couple now living in San Francisco, the Moreheads have created a short memoir of Don's childhood on the 10,000-acre sheep ranch his parents owned and operated from 1941 to 1948 on the Blackfeet Reservation in northern Montana. Told with candor and sensitivity, the story recalls not only a brief wartime period when most farmwork was still done by horses and humans rather than machinery but also the familiar tale of a family thrown off balance by the exigencies of wartime. Central to the memoir is the close relationship between the son and his father, William, who encouraged Don to take an active part in running the ranch. From a distance of half a century, Morehead re-creates a childhood of hard work among the hired herders and shearers, close-to-home adventure with his sister, Donna, and learning the lessons his loving father knew would make him self-sufficient. When his father died of a burst appendix at age 37, Morehead poignantly admits, the ten-year-old son suffered an emotional wound that was slow to heal. As much a frozen moment of time with America on the threshold of the Atomic Age as it is a personal story of an American childhood, this book is a warm and winning backward glance.?Charles Nash, Cottey Coll., Nevada, MOCopyright 1998 Reed Business Information, Inc.

From Booklist
The short season of the title is the childhood in paradise Don Morehead spent on his family's sheep ranch in Montana in the 1940s before his father died suddenly when Don was barely 11 years old. As in the writing of Ivan Doig, the spare, physical prose both celebrates the particulars of place and work and mourns their loss. With rare immediacy, Morehead captures the unselfconscious joy of his childhood when he and his father "danced along together in nearly wordless rhythms of work and play." The boy had everything he wanted: a horse, a BB gun, a fishing pole, a real army jeep to drive (kneeling on the seat), and his dad. Yet on every page, as he remembers tending camp, shearing, haying, trailing with his father "through the long-day summers and forever winters," his memories are muffled by grief. Rooted as this is in the Montana landscape, the experience touches all of us who remember the strong veins in a parent's hands, the muscles and lines of his face. Hazel Rochman


Buy from Amazon     Compare Prices

A married couple now living in San Francisco, the Moreheads have created a short memoir of Don's childhood on the 10,000-acre sheep ranch his parents owned and operated from 1941 to 1948 on the Blackfeet Reservation in northern Montana. Told with candor and sensitivity, the story recalls not only a brief wartime period when most farmwork was still done by horses and humans rather than machinery but also the familiar tale of a family thrown off balance by the exigencies of wartime. Central to the memoir is the close relationship between the son and his father, William, who encouraged Don to take an active part in running the ranch. From a distance of half a century, Morehead re-creates a childhood of hard work among the hired herders and shearers, close-to-home adventure with his sister, Donna, and learning the lessons his loving father knew would make him self-sufficient. When his father died of a burst appendix at age 37, Morehead poignantly admits, the ten-year-old son suffered an emotional wound that was slow to heal. As much a frozen moment of time with America on the threshold of the Atomic Age as it is a personal story of an American childhood, this book is a warm and winning backward glance.Charles Nash, Cottey Coll., Nevada, MO


Buy from Barnes & Noble     Compare Prices