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Nothing to Do but Stay: My Pioneer Mother
Nothing to Do but Stay My Pioneer Mother
Author: Carrie Young
In eight enjoyable anecdotal essays, Young offers a glimpse of the challenges and rewards of 20th-century pioneering life in North Dakota. In 1904, her Norwegian-born mother, Carrine Gafkjen, age 25, set out alone from Minnesota and staked a 160-acre claim; in those early days she walked five miles to a creek to wash her clothes and fetch drinki...  more »
ISBN-13: 9780385313650
ISBN-10: 0385313659
Publication Date: 7/1/1993
Pages: 164
Rating:
  • Currently 4.3/5 Stars.
 12

4.3 stars, based on 12 ratings
Publisher: Dell
Book Type: Paperback
Other Versions: Hardcover
Members Wishing: 1
Reviews: Member | Amazon | Write a Review

Top Member Book Reviews

keycollect avatar reviewed Nothing to Do but Stay: My Pioneer Mother on
Helpful Score: 2
A very good book about rural families-especially mothers-in North Dakota in early 1900's.My mother raised 7 children on a farm-I thought she worked exceedingly hard - but the women in this story were just amazing. An easy quick read.
reviewed Nothing to Do but Stay: My Pioneer Mother on + 8 more book reviews
Helpful Score: 2
A simple and fantastic book about homesteading from the point of a growing child out of an immigrant family making a steak in the extremes of North Dakota. Quick and excellent read. Not really any information, just auto/biographical.
reviewed Nothing to Do but Stay: My Pioneer Mother on + 3561 more book reviews
Helpful Score: 1
This is a true story of a remarkable pioneer woman who in 1904, at 25 years old and single homesteads alone. When she has 320 acres at 34, she marries and has 6 children. Amazing this woman sees that all her children get an education.

This is a great story!
reviewed Nothing to Do but Stay: My Pioneer Mother on + 3 more book reviews
Helpful Score: 1
Excellent book about the life of a pioneering woman and mother. If you want an inspirational read this might be the book for you. The conditions they lived in and yet excelled make our lives today seem pale in comparison.
reviewed Nothing to Do but Stay: My Pioneer Mother on + 27 more book reviews
Helpful Score: 1
An evocative portrait of a pioneer family's world.
The year is 1904. At age 25, Minnesotan Carrine Gafkjen does what few women, or men of her time dare. She sets out to stake a homestead for herself on the windswept North dakota prairie. There she lives alone in her claim shack, subsisting on potatoes and salt and barring her door each night against the howling coyotes, until she becomes a woman of substance and eventually even doubles her holdings of fertile wheat-growing land. Only then, at 34, does carrine marry the homesteader with whom she will bear and raise six children. Excellent read.
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