Homestead (The World As Home)

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About Homestead

Product Description Describes how the author and her family built a wilderness homestead in 1959 Montana that grew into a flourishing ranch and recounts the many adventures that found their roots in early American western and pioneering traditions. IP. From Publishers Weekly Coproducer of A River Runs Through It and executive producer of Heartland, Smith has lived in Montana for more than 30 years. With her husband, Dave, and their four sons, she moved to a ranch near the Big Blackfoot River. It fulfilled their dreams, though they knew Dave had a fatal heart disease; he died at 41. Smith recalls her childhood in Chicago as the daughter of Hungarian emigres, likening her move westward to that of her parents. She offers vivid descriptions of the landscape, of adventures large and small. Smith writes about backpacking into the Bob Marshall wilderness, about her friendship with Norman McLean (who wrote A River Runs Through It) and about her efforts to preserve the land. A joyous celebration of wilderness. Author tour. Copyright 1995 Reed Business Information, Inc. From Library Journal A filmmaker, writer, and widow, Smith lives in remote Montana. From this perspective, she discusses the loss of love, of wilderness, of time. But her overriding message is about the preservation of both personal memories and wild surroundings. These essays, which were previously published in various magazines but have been expanded here, cover cowboy history, the Big Blackfoot (the river featured in A River Runs Through It, which Smith coproduced), snow, fishing, family, and other themes. Some parts of the essays are redundant, but overall this is a worthwhile addition to collections on Montana and large nature collections.?Nancy Moeckel, Miami Univ. Libs., Oxford, Ohio Copyright 1995 Reed Business Information, Inc. From Booklist Smith came to Montana by way of Paris and Chicago, taking up the trek west her parents began when they left Hungary; but it was only years later, after establishing her Montana homestead and becoming thoroughly meshed with Big Sky Country, that Smith realized that, like her parents, she had immigrated to a "land of greater freedom." This is the sort of subtle pattern Smith contemplates in her thoughtful and involving essays. She shares some evocative memories of her culturally stimulating childhood along Lake Michigan, remembering her self-effacing mother and her father, Stephen Deutch, an "almost famous" photographer. Smith married young and ended up in Montana in 1970 with her incurably ill husband and their four sons. They purchased 163 acres of land, built a home out of a recycled log house, and worked hard at living, writing, filmmaking, and loving until Dave's expected but nevertheless jolting death. Smith writes tenderly about these experiences, then rapturously about hiking, skiing, fishing the Big Blackfoot River, dancing, enjoying the company of literary friends Bill Kittredge and Norman Maclean, and working on the film version of A River Runs through It. A low-key yet forceful writer, Smith gives us much to ponder and admire. Donna Seaman