Stories We Didn't Tell

Told through a series of interlinked narrative poems in alternating voices of family members, Stories We Didn't Tell relates the struggles of a family of homesteaders and ranchers who work for cattle barons on the Great Plains. Set in the early to mid 1900s, their difficulties are many, given the social and economic constrictions of the time, the environmental challenges presented by the region in which they live, and the far-reaching impact of two world wars. The stories begin with twelve-year-old Adah who, in 1901, comes home seriously upset after her day of work as a laundry girl and maid at a house in the small town of Crawford, Nebraska. As time moves on, Adah and her family work to find a way out of prescriptive roles that offer few alternatives. In our own era of economic challenges and rising awareness of gender oppression, these poems reveal how determination and resilience during hardship can work to transform possibilities.