No Life for a Lady

A memoir about growing up on a New Mexico cattle ranch in the late 1800s and then watching that land and its way of life slowly changing in the early 20th century.

I wasn't too sure about this book at first; the writing struck me as unpolished and a little disjointed. But there is a certain simple, good-humored honesty about it that grew on me very quickly and left me utterly charmed. It's full of terrific anecdotes, too. Agnes Morley Cleaveland did not particularly like the romantic mythologizing of the cowboy, but her life story nevertheless displays a lot of the exciting Wild West color that has made them such an icon in popular culture, including tales of cattle rustling, outlaws and gunfights. Just as interesting, though, are the show more glimpses of ordinary, day-to-day life on the range, even if much of that life does seem to have consisted of wandering around on foot looking for horses followed by wandering around on horses looking for cows.

Adding to the attraction of this book for me is the fact that the ranchland in question was about sixty miles west of where I am right now, and the town I live in gets a number of mentions. So the experience of reading it is a little like having echoes of the past brought to life right around me. show less

This is an interesting autobiography about Agnes's life filled with entertaining stories of fun and hardship, the good times and the not so good, on a ranch in western New Mexico in the late 1800s and early 1900s. She learned to make the best of it.

BR; David Wilhelms