Kiowa County Public Library District

Begun in Little Britches and Man of the Family, this is the continuing saga of Ralph Moody. In 1918, young Moody and his buddy Lonnie travel through the Southwest in an old Ford named Shiftless, camp in an Arizona canyon and "shake the nickel bush" by sculpting busts of lawyers and bankers.

The protagonist, Mary Emma Moody, widowed mother of six, has taken her family east in 1912 to begin a new life. Her son, Ralph, then thirteen, recalls how the Moodys survive that first bleak winter in a Massachusetts town. Money and prospects are lacking, but not so faith and resourcefulness. "Mother" in Little Britches and Man of the Family, Mary Emma emerges fully as a character in this book, and Ralph, no longer called "Little Britches," comes...

"Twelve and still 'man of the family' Ralph talks his mother into letting him take a summer job on a Colorado cattle ranch, and this is the story of that summer. One gets every phase of the work on the home ranch, where Little Britches earns the right to be called Ralph, and treated like a responsible adult." Kirkus.

"In the early 1920s cowboy and dry-range farmer, Ralph Moody found himself with mountainous debts through the collapse of the livestock market, a the dealings of a crooked partner. He faces the choice of declaring bankruptcy before he turns twenty, or working off the intimidating balance against him. His fortunes seem to be turning when a flash flood takes all he owns, and he is forced to auction off his farm and animals. Ralph never surrenders,...

Little Britches becomes the "man" in his family after his father's early death, taking on the concomitant responsibilities as well as opportunities. During the summer of his twelfth year he works on a cattle ranch in the shadow of Pike's Peak, earning a dollar a day. Little Britches is tested against seasoned cowboys on the range and in the corral. He drives cattle through a dust storm, eats his weight in flapjacks, and falls in love with a blue outlaw...