RANCH WIFE

Ranch Wife is an account of young women's early years of marriage to an Arizona rancher. Jo Jeffers' upbringing in Minnesota was ""geared to a 19th century rural world"" so she was well disposed towards the outdoor life but she found a great number or difficulties, which only experience could overcome. Her story is most interesting when she is relating the season-by-season and day-by-day work of ranching-- branding, roundup, the constant battle against the elements and the very important business of feeding cowboys properly. She recounts a number of incidents involving their Navajo workers, their very essential domestic pets, her own experiment raising sheep and in addition she speculates on the character of the cowboy, the Westerner and ranch women. On the whole, one is sympathetic towards her account except where she strains establishing her credentials as an intellectual. For example she seems far too sensible to have burned the breakfast while meditating on John Donne.