Kris L. (miss-info) reviewed When Montana and I Were Young: A Frontier Childhood (Women in the West Series) on + 386 more book reviews
Helpful Score: 1
A well-told but somewhat disturbing account of the author's life growing up in the new state of Montana, just before 1900. Peggy's mother dies when she is eight and she is left to raise her three little sisters alone. Her step-father gambles away their grocery money on a regular basis, works only when it pleases him, and lets his little girls run the ranch for him even though they are not big enough to lift a hay bale or get a harness on a horse. When he's home to mind them, he beats Peggy, but evidentally not the others. When Peggy is about ten, he begins regularly raping her, until she finally gets away at age 13. In the next few years she slowly finds herself and what she wants to do. The accounts of her physical abuse are somewhat detailed, but nothing sexual is; in fact, the first time it came up, I had to read the paragraph three times to understand what was happening that she didn't like.
