25-Years Don's and Sybil's Story (Paperback)

I met Don, when I followed in the footsteps of my great grandmother, grandmother and mother, who had taught in rural schools out west for three generations in the late 1800's to the beginning of the 1900's and into two decades beyond. My teaching contract was in the school district of the Brandeis Ranch, where I was to board-the biggest ranch in western Nebraska, steeped in history. This is the story of our short twenty-five years of life together that was packed to the hilt with love and well-being, yet not without hardship-raising our five children in God's country. We lived on some of the most prestigious ranches in the day, when business deals were done on a handshake. I was 'queen of the manor' running the office, home and cookhouse in the center of-'a sort of metropolis', from where all things for all people working for our Malmberg Cattle Company depended on for their paycheck and existence. Don's father was the boss and in the midst of cowboys, hired girls, schoolteachers, our five kids and us, he ruled with an iron hand. Although Don and I literally slaved in our utopia, we knew only tranquility and success in the sandhills of Nebraska, God's country, until the day it came to a screeching halt. The book relays life as it unfolded, searching and moving to parts unknown to find again what we had taken for granted. At last we arrived at a place far into Wyoming that Don described to me as his Garden of Eden. We were a well-yoked team, he and I, and at eighty-eight years old, I realized I needed to tell our story to our grandchildren, so something of their most uniquely honest, decent and kind grandfather would speak to them and make a difference.