"Above all, I thank my Mom for entrusting me with
her words. She bought me my first real typewriter when I was eight years
old, and thereby launched my own career as a writer. I am awfully glad
for the chance to return the favor."
—from the editor's introduction
Sample chapter:
From "Hope in the West, 1902-1915"
Prairie Fire
AUTOBIOGRAPHY, 1902-1972
By Olive Conran Westhues
Released in celebration of the author's ninetieth birthday
Edited, with an introduction by Kenneth Westhues
Waterloo, Ont.: K & A Westhues, Publishers,
x + 224 pp., 10 chapters, illustrations and sidebars, paperback, 1992.
ISBN 0-9696210-0-0
This title is now out of print, the third (1993) printing having been exhausted. Copies are available in many city and university libraries, especially in the American Midwest.
Olive Conran Westhues died in 2003, at the age of 100 years.
From The Missouri Historical Review (April 1993):
In recalling her childhood as a farmer's daughter in Colorado and her young adult and adult years as a farmer's wife in Glasgow, Missouri, Westhues describes rural American life in the twentieth century. Her story is a personal memoir of family and friends and their interaction with farm and small-town life. Major events of this century, such as European immigration, the depression, World Wars I and II and the Vietnam era, are presented from the vantage point of a country woman living in the Midwest. Westhues's interesting account is available from Ye Olde Curiosity Shop, 112 Market St., Glasgow, Missouri 65254.