So the experience of reading it is a little like having echoes of the past brought to life right around me. Just as interesting, though, are the glimpses of ordinary, day-to-day life on the range, even if much of that life does seem to have consisted of wandering around on foot looking for horses followed by wandering around on horses looking for cows.Īdding to the attraction of this book for me is the fact that the ranchland in question was about sixty miles west of where I am right now, and the town I live in gets a number of mentions. Agnes, who spent most of her later adult life away from New Mexico, became quite a successful and noted author.

where Agnes spent the early part of her life until she was sent to school in Philadelphia. The Morley family settled near Datil, N.M. Her prize-winning book, No Life for A Lady (1941), is an autobiographical story of a woman’s life on a turn-of-the-century ranch. Agnes Morley Cleaveland did not particularly like the romantic mythologizing of the cowboy, but her life story nevertheless displays a lot of the exciting Wild West color that has made them such an icon in popular culture, including tales of cattle rustling, outlaws and gunfights. Agnes Morley Cleaveland was born in 1874. Title: Agnes Morley Cleaveland, (18741958) A native New Mexican, Agnes Morley Cleaveland grew up on her family’s ranch near Datil, New Mexico. But there is a certain simple, good-humored honesty about it that grew on me very quickly and left me utterly charmed. I wasn't too sure about this book at first the writing struck me as unpolished and a little disjointed.

A memoir about growing up on a New Mexico cattle ranch in the late 1800s and then watching that land and its way of life slowly changing in the early 20th century.

Agnes morley cleaveland