"Suddenly the canyon opened for a constricted ranch with weathered buildings, but the bit of field above the rocky terrace was lush with green. Grandpa pointed to the field. 'The winters here are mild,' he said contentedly. 'In the main, of course. Mild winters, no roads reaching in. That's why it's a great stock country.'"
Grace Jordan and her family moved to a ranch near Hell's Canyon in the midst of the Great Depression. Apparently they were coming from eastern Oregon (near Enterprise), and their move to an isolated sheep ranch on the Snake River was a gamble.
Aside from the above, there's really not much to say about this book. Mrs. Jordan arrives at the ranch with her three children, and they then set about making a life in one of the most remote parts of the continental U.S. They install plumbing, various children get sick, and Grace's husband Len takes sheep up into the hills. They have no TV, no reliable phone connection, no refrigerator, and the nearest road is a day's ride away.
There's also no real conclusion to Mrs. Jordan's story. At the end of the book they simply move to the nearest town, and do so for no identifiable reason other than a concern for their children's schooling. Some readers might find this lack of an overarching message or conclusion frustrating, but I think that it lends the book an authenticity it wouldn't have otherwise had. It's just life - hour by hour, day by day - and things just tend to happen.
If you're interested in the history of Idaho, Oregon, or the Pacific Northwest I would recommend this book. It's an easy read, and it's interesting to learn about how people survive the 19th century while (ostensibly) living in the 20th.
Related Entries:
"Crow Killer" by Raymond W. Thorp and Robert Bunker (1969)
"Astoria" by Peter Stark (2015)
"The Oregon Trail" by Rinker Buck (2015)
"Historic America: The Northwest" by Jim Kaplan (2002)
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