Leaning into the Wind: Women Write from the Heart of the West

In the true stories, essays, and poems of Leaning into the Wind we meet the real women of the High Plains today. Included are reflections on cowboys, tractor-driving lessons, outhouses, ranch marriages, and family legacies.

Hearts of the West are unburdened in Leaning into the Wind, an anthology encompassing a wealth of experiences from farmers, ranchers, rangers, and other women who live and work in America's ofttimes harsh, sometimes beautiful high plains states shoehorned between the Mississippi and the Rockies. A New York newspaper writer transplanted to a hog farm on the "baking brown plains" sees a sagging trailer, rubbish, and waist-high weeds where her exuberant husband sees only promise. Waking on a bed of sweet straw after sobbing hysterically, she finds "dozens of piglets curled around me, nestled against my hips, tucked under my outspread arms, piled like a halo around my head." Other contributors wax poetic, describing an old pickup truck that "wanders down the road like a drunken goose" or steam coming off a newborn lamb in the chill night air. The selections tend toward rough-edged and gritty, but all are heartfelt.