Riding the White Horse Home: A Western Family Album

Through four generations Jordan's family lived on a ranch in southeastern Wyoming. When it was sold, she felt she had lost a way of life. She attempts to resolve that loss in this charming memoir, recalling incidents in her childhood and examining the lives of female family members. We meet Jordan's paternal grandmother (``a difficult woman''), her mother and her great-aunt--all women who had to accept difficult lives that included hard physical labor and its attendant dangers. Noting the decline of the family farm, Jordan regrets that our culture teaches us to value a professional life more than one tied to the land. Her community, Iron Mountain, numbers 30 today, down from a population of 2000 a century ago. (Apr.)