A Short Season is Don Morehead’s bittersweet story of growing up on a Montana ranch during the 1940s. In 1941 his parents eagerly took up residence on a ten-thousand-acre sheep ranch in northern Montana. The entire family was soon caught up in the natural rhythm and grueling work of ranch life, meeting those challenges with energy, patience, and humor. The driving force behind the ranch and family was the father, Bill Morehead, the “hub around which activity spun.” Don especially was drawn into his father’s world, rarely leaving his side, and becoming known as his “small partner.” When his father died suddenly in 1948, Don was left with lingering, irreducible grief and loneliness.

 

Replete with marvelous details of ranching life, Don Morehead’s story is also a sobering and moving meditation on childhood and the special relationship that can develop between father and son. Morehead returns us to the quiet surprises of the first short season with our parents and helps us better understand the inevitable sadness of moving on.

Don and Ann Morehead live in San Francisco.

"This marvelous memoir, smelling of the sheep camp and open country, movingly recalls the author’s growing-up years through a full cycle of Montana seasons. His detailed and tactile story evokes swift, sharp remembrances—even for this misty-eyed Basque sheepherder’s kid."—Richard W. Etulain, author of Reimagining the Modern American West: A Century of Fiction, History, and Art