Prairy City

I am reading Angie Debo's book Prairy City and I am just enthralled. The book was originally published in 1944 and reprinted twice the last being in 1985 by Council Oak Books LTD. At that time she was 95 years old, She passed in 1988. I dont know much about Angie Debo yet but I feel I really found a jem. Prairy City is so beautifully written. I hang on to sentences and paragraphs and read them two or three times just for the pleasure they give me.

If your not familiar, Debo was a historian of Indian and Oklahoma history. I cant tell you much about her yet because I have just discovered her, but Prairy City is about a town being formed in the early years following the Oklahoma land run. I'm afraid Angie Debo is about to become my new obsession. Remember I am from Seattle.

This is somthing I savored for some time last night:

"Thus each homesteader struggled with his individual difficulty. And as the wheat ripened, all was merged into the stress and toil, the zest and excitment of that first harvest. As one long day of perfect weather followed another, the grain fell evenly before the sickle and was piled into smooth golden shocks. For the first time in all the brooding ages the prairy landscape stretched field after field to the horizon bearing this crown of ordered beauty."

"Something of this feeling of mystery and wonder came to the people as they worked. Characteristicly they planned a celebration; nothing else would express their thankfulness for the harvest, their pride in the new land they had tamed, their joy in the work of their hands."

Gosh every time I read that I get chills.