“I hope readers will find much to delight them in these stories, which fully inhabit each animal from the smallest newly hatched chick to the wisest mother cow and the most faithful ranch dog and the wiliest coyote.” —Rosanne Parry, from the Foreword

In this classic collection of charming tales from 1931, writer, teacher, and homesteader Alice Day Pratt shares her love of animals and of the West. Animals of a Sagebrush Ranch features Bingo, the lovable and intelligent big brown setter; Fly, the fine white mare, and Babe, the ebony-black colt; Kitty Kat and her kitten, El Dorado; Rab, the sturdy cow pony; and the many other animals who romped over the hills of Central Oregon’s Broadview Ranch.

Introducing Pratt’s ranch animals to today’s readers, this edition includes a new foreword by award-winning author Rosanne Parry and the original and timeless illustrations by Kurt Wiese. Animal lovers of all ages will delight in these splendid stories from the high desert and enjoy reading and rereading these adventures that still capture youthful joy.
 

“So much is so skillfully crammed into this little book that the reader comes to admire Pratt’s zest while wondering how she could possibly have endured. . . . A splendid introduction by Molly Gloss, author of The Jump-Off Creek, enhances the book with a biography of the author and a study of her writings.” —Oregon Historical Quarterly

In 1911 Alice Day Pratt, single and nearing forty, boarded a train and left the east coast to file claim on 160 acres of land in the Central Oregon high desert. She was one among tens of thousands of people who took up homesteads in the arid West in the early twentieth century. Perhaps as many as 20 percent of these settlers were single women. Yet homesteading women are largely missing from the literature and histories of the West.

The commonly held image of frontier women as powerless and dependent helpmates stems in part from the scarcity of written accounts by homesteading women. Alice Day Pratt’s powerful memoir presents a rare, fascinating account of the life of a woman homesteader and chronicles her single-handed efforts to overcome the obstacles that faced all homesteaders—men and women—in the dryland West.

Pratt’s independent and adventurous spirit allowed her to hang on to her “homesteading dream” for more than a decade after most other homesteaders had packed their belongings and left the desert. By exploring the life she lived and the choices she made, Pratt offers an important glimpse into the social and cultural history of the American West.