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When I Came West
Laurie Wagner Buyer
University of Oklahoma Press
978-0-8061-4059-9
 
“In the end the land has been my best friend, my favorite teacher and my most passionate lover,” the author concludes in this beautifully crafted memoir of a young city woman who gave up college to live in the Montana wilderness with a man she had never met.
 
Buyer, an award-winning novelist, poet, and the author of a previous memoir, relates how in 1975 she moved in with Bill, a volatile, if not emotionally ill, Vietnam vet.  They lived in an old log cabin that lacked most amenities, including indoor plumbing.
 
She describes how her love affair with the harsh wilderness outlasted her relationship with Bill, and how she grew into an independent, self-sufficient woman, and became friends with horses, rodents, and especially goats.  Buyer credits the goats for inspiring her writing career because they not only gave unconditional love, but proved to be an appreciative audience.  After leaving Bill, she worked as a housekeeper and eventually married a rancher in 1989.  The author now lives in Llano, Texas, where she teaches and hikes in the high country.  This book brims with engaging stories of the friends she made and the ones she left behind during her thirty years living off and with the land.  Readers, and their goats, will be captivated.  –from Forward Review

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Dearest Laurie,
OU Press sent me a copy of your newest book and I curled up with it in bed over the course of a few evenings, thinking of our conversations, the things you shared with me about Bill and that time in your life. You have honored these experiences, and the girl you were then, in such a beautiful way, with such craft and heart, Laurie. You deserve many awards for this labor of love, and I know they will come your way.

If you haven’t watched this Eve Ensler video, it’s very powerful, and important. http://www.ted.com/talks/lang/eng/eve_ensler_embrace_your_inner_girl.html

Love,
Page
Page Lambert

Connecting People with Nature,

Connecting Writers with Words

Writing. Speaking. Consulting. Custom Retreats.
www.pagelambert.com

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Laurie,

Congratulations on When I Came West finally hitting the bookshelves. I know it has been a LONG process.

I have written about it for my column that will run in the Fence Post next week. (text below).

Candy Moulton
www.candymoulton.com
www.westernwriters.org

When I Came West

By Candy Moulton

I know more about the writing of this book—When I Came West, by Laurie Wagner Buyer—than almost any book I’ve ever read with the exception of those I wrote myself, in part because I read it three times in early manuscript form and discussed it at length with editors at the University of Oklahoma, with the author, and with another writer who also responded more than once to requests for a “reader’s report.”

Reviewing it now is, for me, somewhat anticlimactic. I actually wondered if it would ever be published, and to be certain the book now available is much changed from the earlier versions I read—even the last one I saw.

These comments are from my last “reader’s report” on the manuscript and mirror my earlier reporting to the press: “Few women in the 20th century set out to ‘homestead’ as Laurie Wagner Buyer has done. This personal story has many lessons about challenge and hardship. Clearly the author kept a journal and the words she wrote became a way to center her life.

“This is a story of a woman’s personal journey in the West. Laurie Wagner Buyer leaves her city life behind in the 1970s, moves to Montana where she lives in a cabin with no modern amenities. Her companion is a self-proclaimed mountain man who has a mean streak, and who teaches her about ‘getting tough.’

“It is a memoir that compares to works by such writers as Linda Hasselstrom (Windbreak), Teresa Jordan (Riding the White Horse Home) and Page Lambert (In Search of Kinship). The fact that the author moved into the West with no background about life in the region sets it apart from the work of Hasselstrom (a South Dakota rancher’s daughter/wife) and Jordan (daughter/granddaughter of Wyoming ranchers). This is a memoir such as could have been written by a woman headed West in the 19th century leaving behind family, friends, amenities to forge a new life. The author does not glamorize the life, she tells of the harsh realities in unrepentant terms.”

Having just reread the book, I am again struck by the hard life Laurie found in the West. Although she came as a “mail-order” companion her arrival was in the 1970s, not the 1870s. Even so she had to struggle in learning how to deal with isolation, no close women friends, and becoming self-reliant while learning to cook on a wood stove, haul water, and butcher animals.

There are some who will not like this book, who will say she lived with a man who was harsh, if not actually sadistic. That she should have extracted herself from an uncomfortable life long before she actually did that. It is hard to even imagine being so lonely that making a puppet from the hide of a mouse, carefully skinned and brain tanned, would life a woman’s spirits. Yet that was part of the reality of Laurie’s early life in Montana.

The power of this book is Laurie’s lyrical writing, and I would say she is absolutely one of the best writers I’ve ever read.

For Laurie the story, the power that pulled her to the West, was the land. And certainly that is what kept her here. But she can say it better than I: “I stayed because the land was my life, my inspiration, my sassy muse. The land became my reason for staying alive. Without the land, without the West, who would I be? Where would I call home?”

“After the years of toughing out a homestead life on the Northfork of the Flathead River in far northern Montana, I knew I belonged to the West, and the West in her own intractable, implacable way, belonged to me,” Laurie wrote.

Once this book had more words, more pages, but Laurie has stripped it down to a simple linear story that is powerful for the way she links words, thoughts, emotions onto the page.

This is a book you won’t soon forget, written by a woman who has endured privation, loneliness, physical and emotional trauma…all of which she survived, in part, by putting words on paper.

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One of the benefits of my job as administrator for Women Writing the West is that a book occasionally lands on my doorstep for review. Although we don’t officially review books, and I’m not an especially strong reader, I read as many of them as possible. Member titles then go to trade show exhibits, then into library circulation at the Women Writing the West Collection.

Recently, I had the pleasure of reading “ When I Came West” by Laurie Wagner Buyer. Laurie is a friend, and I knew it would be an outstanding piece before I started. However, I could not put it down for different reasons. You see, Laurie had an amazing wilderness experience in 1974. I had one as well in 1973. Mine did not transcend the wilderness experience as hers did, but mine was far greater in another respect. I was able to share my experience, working in Yellowstone National Park, with women friends who have remained close to me all these years. This was an aspect of Laurie’s wilderness experience which was missing for her.

My experience living and working in Yellowstone seems frivolous now in relation to Laurie’s. However, I continue to enjoy reunions and adventures with the same friends who have stayed close all this time. We’ve shared brilliant joys and profound sorrows that befall us all. From our little clan of five women, we’ve added others through our partners and children, including a set of twins, and my son. We’ve had relationships with cowboys, mountain men, war vets, park service workers, college guys, and hippies. Our reunions are always warm and wonderful, with new experiences to share. My life has been wonderfully embellished by them all.

But back to Laurie. She has the most wonderful way of sharing her life experiences, by baring her soul and inviting us in to understand her pain and share her victories.

I know her. I look at her photos from the 70s, and I know that look of defiance. I understand why she went into the wilderness. In ‘73, my pals and I sat on benches in Gardiner, Montana, watching the movie, “Jeremiah Johnson”. In total awe, we were ready to follow the mountain man or his ilk, a bearded guy in plaid shirt and jeans with a Buck knife hanging from his belt, to the mountains. A couple of us did. The difference was that we had our women friends to sustain us when we came out and while we stayed in. Laurie points that out, and knows well the power of such friendships. She is a composite of us all.

To learn more about Laurie and her books, go to:
http://lauriewagnerbuyer.com /

Joyce Lohse, 2/12/10
Go to: www.lohseworks.com
and visit the Yellowstone Savage page