When I Came West is Laurie Wagner Buyer’s account of her terrifying and exhilarating years in Montana as she changes from a girl too squeamish to touch a dead mouse to a toughened frontierswoman unafraid to butcher a domestic animal. Living in a cabin far away from family and friends, with the nearest neighbor four miles away, Laurie finds herself caught up in two love affairs: one with the volatile Vietnam vet Bill and one with the untamed West—even as she recognizes, in the words of one neighbor, “It is plumb foolishness to love something that cannot love you back.”
A few books are still available on Amazon and from her publisher.
Laurie’s 7th Letter: (Sent to DK with Permission to print)
By March 8th, OU Press had received a very positive response from the first reader, with the exception that the person did not care for the title and wished that there had been an introduction that perhaps might address “to what does [Laurie] ascribe her extraordinary ability to cope with the new life of work, danger, pain, distress, and privation, she fell headlong into?”
In my reply to Matt, I said that I would happily begin to deal with those areas that needed work. He wrote back and said, “Your memoir will be an important work in the contemporary women’s west, for sure. I am sure the second reader’s report will be quite positive, and we’ll move forward from there, hopefully by the end of the month.”
But by May the second reader had not responded and Matt wrote, “We’re still trying to get the reader to turn the evaluation and have waited an extra six weeks. But this reader has a day job and is also a writer. They must have an avalanche on top of them. As long as the book benefits from good reading, it’s well worth it…I will send the second report when it arrives.”
Meanwhile, the first reader had been so enthusiastic about the manuscript that he was collecting “serious comments” from others including a well-known western writer who responded, “I found myself absorbed at once…You’ve had pain, but a life without pain is not worth living.” On May 9th Matt Bokovoy finally wrote to me and said, “I am writing to inform you that the second reader should be sending their report in very soon…I am sorry about the delay and we have been diligent in encouraging the reader to finish up the evaluation.”
For my part, as I waited on the second reader’s response, I was very busy trying to get the word out about my new book of poetry, Across the High Divide.