ROOTED at the EDGE

Ranching Where the Old West and New West Collide

by Donna L. Erickson
Published by University of Nebraska Press, Bison Books

Rooted at the Edge paints a portrait of a ranching community steeped in history, conflict, and beauty. In this narrative nonfiction work, Donna Erickson explores the hilly skirt of ground at the northern boundary of Missoula, Montana, separating the town from the wilderness beyond. In the movie A River Runs Through It, opening credits scan across the 1950s town, the North Hills, and the wilderness beyond. The North Hills region represents the critical—and often highly personal—issues at play at the edge of many western towns.

The urban-rural fringe is both valuable and vulnerable. Across the West, a way of life and a way of work are vanishing. Ranchland is simultaneously cherished by families for the lives they’ve made there and coveted by urban neighbors for open space. Community residents may love a place for its scenery and wildlife habitat while others wish it converted to a commercial parking lot. Complex ecological relationships can be bulldozed in a single afternoon. Rooted at the Edge conveys, in a way that statistics cannot, what’s at stake when ranches at the urban fringe are threatened.

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APRIL 3, Thursday
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Book Praise

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Testimonials

“If you have lived in Montana, you won’t be surprised: this ranch child’s memoir is smart, succinct, and honest. It is also a fine addition to Montana literature. In style and content, this is a model of personal history. A memoir depends not on what was, on what has changed, or on nostalgia but on style: how sensitive and intelligent is the speaker? We need a well-spoken guide through this forest of the ‘was’ that no longer is. A voice we can trust, as well as events worth remembering. In every page, this is a voice I trust and respect.”

—William Bevis, author of Ten Tough Trips: Montana Writers and the West

“Rooted at the Edge is the story of a woman of the American West who learned to read landscapes on the back of a horse. In a clear, authentic voice, Donna Erickson herds words with the same acumen and determination she developed moving sheep and cattle in her youth, drawing on her experience of her Montana home to tell a universal tale about attachment to place. She inspires us to think about the future of our surroundings with empathy and common sense, and to see how land creates belonging.”

—Frederick Steiner, dean of the Stuart Weitzman School of Design, University of Pennsylvania and author of The Living Landscape: An Ecological Approach to Landscape Planning

“Like the Lone Pine of Skyline Ranch, standing sentinel over the author’s childhood home of Missoula, Montana, Rooted at the Edge draws us together to consider what truly matters as our communities face dramatic changes. The author’s pen is on the pulse of life in this mountain valley as it adjusts to changes in technology, demography, and climate. Donna Erickson weaves a soulful web through the decades, then leads us to the edge for a glimpse into the future. So vivid and well-written, even the history of the Missoula stockyards is an engaging read.”

—Sally Thompson, author of Black Robes Enter Coyote’s World

“In Rooted at the Edge, Donna Erickson beautifully portrays the rich history of three generations of her family’s life on the Skyline Ranch, one of three ranches perched in the North Hills overlooking Missoula, Montana. In clear, crisp prose, Erickson explores the intertwining of family, land, and community among these twenty-first-century ranchers. Whether she is writing about riding fence, haying, moving cattle, showing 4-H calves, or working in the family café at the stockyard, Erickson tells an important story of how a family’s grit and ingenuity assure survival on the ranch overlooking a burgeoning town. A wonderful addition to Montana literature!”

—Caroline Patterson, author of The Stone Sister, winner of a 2022 High Plains Book Award

“Rich, multilayered, meticulously researched, and lovingly portrayed, Rooted at the Edge is essential reading for mending fences and opening hearts. With her deep roots in the Skyline Ranch and a career in open-space planning, Donna Erickson lifts the blinders that stereotype ranchers and environmentalists. Ultimately, she offers the promise of a new way forward for conservation, like the return of the mountain bluebird—her favorite bird.”

—Marina Richie, author of Halcyon Journey: In Search of the Belted Kingfisher, winner of the 2024 John Burroughs Medal

“Part loving memorial of Donna Erickson’s girlhood on Montana’s Skyline Ranch, part warning of damages to the land through the forces of development, Rooted at the Edge concludes with a feather of hope for western Montana’s landscape. Beautifully detailed and evocative.”

—Mary Clearman Blew, author of Think of Horses

“Donna Erickson’s elegant and gripping account of her family’s experiences ranching on the edge of Missoula . . . has provided a new layer of understanding to the challenges now facing Missoula and countless other western towns and cities. . . . There is nothing easy about the lives of the families Erickson writes about, but it’s the irrepressible sense of possibility running through her account of those lives that will help us work our way toward solutions to the challenges now facing our communities.”

—Daniel Kemmis, former Speaker of the Montana House of Representatives and former mayor of Missoula and author of This Sovereign Land: A New Vision for Governing the West