Enchantment and Despair

Deadly drought, near fatal accidents, blizzards, grasshopper plagues, choking dust storms, endless days of relentless toil for measly crop yields ... ... enchanting big skies, an endless undulating prairie, the spine-tingling cry of midnight coyotes, the self-satisfaction of scratching sustenance from the earth ... This is the Montana of Calvin Wall Redekop's childhood, a place at once what the neighbors labeled "the most awful forsaken place God had ever created" and a magical world for a wide-eyed boy. These background forces of hardship and wonder constituted Redekop's earliest memories and in the retrospective vision of these remembrances he finds the subtle basis for his subsequent personal development and orientation. The mutual interdependence in the homesteading community encountered in Enchantment and Despair: A Montana Childhood 1925 - 1937 helped Redekop see the significance and power of cooperative human ventures, and recognize the importance of the environment in human survival: awareness the author has acted upon throughout his life. Readers will be transported back in time by this vivid account of another age and, like its author, pass through despair to find themselves enchanted....