Homesteaders Hopes: Taming the Wild Prairie

By Larry Opseth

Homesteading the unbroken buffalo grass Great Plains in the late 1800s wasn't for the weak or fainthearted. Settlers like my grandparents arrived with little more than hope and the promise of free land. They fought snow, forty degrees below zero temperatures, and blizzards that lasted for days. They suffered through the summer heat, untimely droughts, prairie fires, grasshoppers, exploitation by the railroads and the crooked politicians.Homesteaders came from all over including the flood of European Immigrants. They set up their own society with the strangers who happened to homestead next to them. Working together was essential for survival. Many of them failed or died trying. These were hard working folk who knew if they failed they could starve and lose everything. Theirs are the stories that were repeated by the thousand-fold.Those Homesteaders were hardworking, determined people who had successes and failures and endured the Great Depression and the dust bowl of the Dirty Thirties that forever changed the landscape of that rural society. Many of my family and friends will recognize some of the people, places, and stories in this novel even though I have changed the names and places to protect their privacy.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 1521118825
• ISBN13: 9781521118825
• Release Date: April 2017
• Publisher: Independently published
• Length: 254 Pages
• Weight: 0.99 lbs.
• Dimensions: 9.0" x 0.6" x 6.0"