Lost for almost half a century and never before published, When Montana and I Were Young is a remarkable primary account of a child’s life in the early part of the twentieth century. Margaret Bell (1888–1982) was a rancher and horse breaker whose memoir tells the story of a frontier childhood on the high plains of Montana and Canada. Hers was not a typical childhood. Bell was barely seven when her mother died, and her stepfather, Hedge Wolfe, moved Bell and her three younger half-sisters far from their nurturing grandmother to the Canadian plains and a life of extreme poverty, hardship, and abuse.

Mary Clearman Blew is a professor of English at the University of Idaho in Moscow. She is the author of Balsamroot and Bone-Deep in Landscape. Lee Rostad is the author of Honey Wine and Hunger Root.

“Young Margaret (Peggy) displayed a dignity and resourcefulness that rank her among even fictitious literary heroines. Indeed, her very survival was amazing. . . . Both riveting and important, her book is a valuable addition to frontier narratives.”—Booklist

“Bell practiced self-reliance and stoicism from an early age, and her memoir never lapses into self-pity. This powerful account belongs on the shelf of every student of pioneer history or women’s history.”—Publishers Weekly

“An unforgettable story that gives meaning to the term ‘true survivor.’”—ForeWord Magazine

“Margaret Bell’s When Montana and I Were Young: A Frontier Childhood is a wrenching memoir of an impoverished and abusive childhood on the ranching frontiers of Montana and Canada around the turn of the twentieth century.”—Nebraska History