Lazy B

In 1880 Sandra Day O'Connor's grandfather Henry Clay Day put some cattle on public lands for grazing, in the area covered by the Gadsden Purchase from Mexico. "All one needed," O'Connor writes, "was a herd of cattle and someone to watch over them. God and the free market would do the rest." In LAZY B, OConnor describes life in a time gone by, a unique childhood and youth on the harsh yet beautiful dry lands of the American Southwest. She writes of the settling of the Lazy B, the constant struggle to keep it going and make ends meet; the powerful love story of her steadfast, resourceful, resilient parents, her tough task-master father and her mother who managed to look stylish while buying her clothes through magazines. She tells about the cowboys who made up the extended Lazy B family, an unromanticized, authentic view of a hard life. It was a harsh and frugal life-the Lazy B did not have electricity, hot water or indoor plumbing for much of O'Connor's youth. She writes, "As we were growing up, we saw that nothing would ever be thrown away if it had any conceivable practical use. Nothing would be wasted. Repairs would be made on any and all equipment right on the ranch with whatever means were available. A purchase of new equipment or objects was a rare event. No task was too small to be done as well as possible. No task was too large to be undertaken. No day went by without hoping and praying for rain." As you read about the daily adventures, the cattle drives, round-ups, and the values instilled by a hard-work life, you see how Sandra Day CTConnor became the woman she is today. "Sandra Day O'Connor and her brother have taken all the temes of the conventional Western narrative...and transposed them from the usual narrative of the isolated, rootless male figure of the Western into the story of...a family and their relationship to an arid and beautiful expanse of land...This is a book for every reader, whether interested in conservation, history, family dynamics, education, or just plain adventure." -Jill Ker Conway "This beautifully told story of the Lazy B will eventually settle on the reader and, like a magic dust of smiles and pleasures, stay there forever."