books i have read
books i have read
Moody, Ralph. The Dry Divide. 1963. Archive.org.
“One of the best accounts I have ever read of a midlands harvest, but it is more: It offers a wonderful person in young manhood, and he is uncommonly worth knowing.”
-Chicago Tribune
Ralph Moody, just turned twenty, had only a dime in his pocket when he was put off a freight in western Nebraska. It was the Fourth of July in 1919. Three months later he owned eight teams of horses and rigs to go with them. Everyone who worked with him shared in the prosperity—the widow whose wheat crop was saved and the group of misfits who formed a first-rate harvesting crew. But sometimes fickle Mother Nature and frail human nature made sure that nothing was easy. The tension between opposing forces never lets up in this book.
Without preaching, The Dry Divide warmly illustrates the old-time virtues of hard work, ingenuity, and respect for others. The Ralph Moody who was a youngster in Little Britches and who grew up without a father and with early responsibilities in Man of the Family, The Fields of Home, The Home Ranch, Mary Emma & Company, and Shaking the Nickel Bush has become a man to reckon with in The Dry Divide.
One of my favorite’s in the series, even though the beginning is hard to get through, with the brutality of the bully Hudson and his cruelty to his animals. He gets his just desserts, though, and the rest of the book is a great story of the reward of hard work.
The Dry Divide by Ralph Moody
Monday, January 28, 2019