From a Soddy

"Where a man makes a living, a woman makes a home." The womenfolk didn't share in the excitement that bubbled up from Carrie's husband, Bill, and her brother, Charlie, when the two returned from their scouting trip "Out West" - to the land called Dakota in 1906. "There's land just waiting for farmers to make something of it," Bill reported. His pride filled his eyes, he added, "We can have a hundred sixty acres just for living there and working it for a few years." In Dakota the family will find a sod house with a dirt floor, no curtains on the windows, and no well in the yard! Far from the comforts of civilization, Henry, only six years old when the story begins, is amazed by the county. This is the land he had overheard his Grandmother Lang describe as filled with "wild Indians and crazy cowboys" in protest of the family's move. Share in the account of the family's joys and hardships as they homesteaded what was then frontier land near Lemmon, South Dakota, in the early 1900s. The true stories of Henry Miller and his siblings come to life here in the pages of From a Soddy, written by his daughter, Marlys Miller Denholm.