In this warm-hearted sometimes hilarious sometimes poignant account, Gwen Ellis relates what it was like to grow up in Montana's Big Sky country in the 1940s when houses had no electric dryers or dishwashers and many people burned wood and coal to keep warm and to cook. This is the story of self-made Montanans extracting game from the forests to feed their families, growing and preserving huge garden crops to carry them through brutally cold winters. Here you will experience the smell of metal that clung to smelter workers clothes when they returned from their shift each day. You'll hear the bawl of calves and pounding of horses hooves as cowboys and ranchers care for their herds. And you'll see the sky--the magnificent vault of clear blue big sky that seems to go on into eternity. She tells of air so crisp and clean it seems newly-minted. Hike beside her on woodland paths lined with bear grass throwing its huge white plumes into the summer breeze. Relive never-to-be-forgotten camping trips into the Bob Marshall Wilderness.

From copper mines strikes that turn ugly to a major riot at the Montana State Prison located just blocks from her home to crazy kids' stuff like making stew on a grander scale, capturing a live goose and insisting her parents bring it 600 miles home in a cage in the car. This is the story of homemade and homegrown people with fiercely independent spirits who fill the state of Montana with a powerful and creative can-do attitude that exists yet today. This is the story of a good life made exceptional by love.