The Prairie Keepers


Book Description

The ruggedly beautiful Zumwalt Prairie in northeastern Oregon has become a battleground in the war between ranchers and environmentalists. In this eloquent expose, wildlife biologist Marcy Houle shows what she learned about this majestic region--and why ranchers, grazing, and wildlife not only can coexist but must coexist if we are to save our native prairies.




Prairie Rose


Book Description

Hope and love blossom on the untamed prairie as a young woman searching for a place to call home happens upon a Kansas homestead during the 1860s . . . A Town Called Hope, the inspiring series set in post–Civil War Kansas, is the creation of best-selling romance writer Catherine Palmer. In the fast-paced Prairie Rose, impulsive nineteen-year-old Rosie Mills takes a job caring for the young son of widowed homesteader Seth Hunter in order to escape the orphanage in which she was raised. Rosie’s naive view of love and her understanding of what it means to have a Father in heaven are quickly put to the test. Afraid of being wounded again, Seth struggles to freely open his heart—to his hurting son, to a woman’s love, and to a Father who will not abandon him. Together Rosie and Seth must face the harsh uncertainties of prairie life—and the one man who threatens to destroy their happiness. Prairie Rose launches a series sure to satisfy readers who expect solid biblical values in a wholesome, exhilarating romance.




Keepers of the Wolves


Book Description

It was 1978, and there had been no resident timber wolves in Wisconsin for twenty years. Still, packs were active in neighboring Minnesota, and there was the occasional rumor from Wisconsin's northwestern counties of wolf sign or sightings. Had wolves returned on their own to Wisconsin? Richard Thiel, then a college student with a passion for wolves, was determined to find out. Thus begins Keepers of the Wolves, Thiel's tale of his ten years at the center of efforts to track and protect the recovery of wolves in Northern Wisconsin. From his early efforts as a student enthusiast to his departure in 1989 from the post of wolf biologist for the Department of Natural Resources, Thiel conveys the wonder, frustrations, humor, and everyday hard work of field biologists, as well as the politics and public relations pitfalls that so often accompany their profession. We share in the excitement as Thiel and his colleagues find wolf tracks in the snow, howl in the forest night and are answered back, learn to safely trap wolves to attach radio collars, and track the packs' ranges by air from a cramped Piper Cub. We follow the stories of individual wolves and their packs as pups are born and die, wolves are shot by accident and by intent, ravages of canine parvovirus and hard winters take their toll, and young adults move on to new ranges. Believing he had left his beloved wolves behind, Thiel takes a new job as an environmental educator in central Wisconsin, but soon wolves follow. By 1999, there were an estimated 200 timber wolves in 54 packs in Wisconsin. This is a sequel to Dick Thiel's 1994 book, The Timber Wolf in Wisconsin: The Death and Life of a Majestic Predator. That book traced the wolf's history in Wisconsin, its near extinction, and the initial efforts to reestablish it in our state. Thiel's new book looks at how successful that program has been.




The Gift of Caring


Book Description

The desire to help our elders navigate health issues is clear and universal—how to assure proper care and a good ending is not. Combining adroit storytelling skills with expert advice, The Gift of Caring: Saving Our Parents from the Perils of Modern Healthcare brings the reader into all-too-familiar scenarios facing our aging parents and offers answers to questions we may not know to ask until it’s too late. Author and biologist Marcy Houle shares her personal journey of caring for her father, a surgeon, who developed Alzheimer’s, and later her mother, who succumbed to other medical conditions. Like many children of aging parents, Marcy often felt powerless traveling this sad trajectory—watching them fall through the cracks of a fragmented and confusing healthcare system, where professionals often wrote off their symptoms as “just old age.” Not having the understanding of the changes that come with aging, she was led to believe there was nothing she could do to help. The tragic secret? According to coauthor and geriatrics physician Elizabeth Eckstrom, these symptoms frequently are not “just old age.” Rather, the problem is that the current healthcare delivery model for older people is ill-equipped to provide the comprehensive, person-centered care seniors need. Today, thousands of aging people face unnecessary suffering, hospitalizations, nursing home stays, and even death due to complications that could have been prevented or treated. Even more troubling, many healthcare professionals have had little or no training in the care of older adults. The Gift of Caring reveals these pitfalls and provides families with tools they can use to avoid them. Interspersed with every few chapters of Marcy’s riveting story, Dr. Eckstrom shares professional medical insights, compiled from the latest research, into what Marcy could have done to safeguard her parents. She shows us how to navigate the system, how we can become our loved one’s best advocate, and what we need to know to achieve healthy aging and meaningful, compassionate final years. Honest, at times humorous, and ultimately uplifting, The Gift of Caring sheds new light on aging from twin perspectives: a story of a daughter desperately seeking help for the parents she loves, and a geriatrician who gives us the knowledge we need to insist upon a better way.




The Seed Keeper


Book Description

A haunting novel spanning several generations, The Seed Keeper follows a Dakhóta family’s struggle to preserve their way of life, and their sacrifices to protect what matters most. Rosalie Iron Wing has grown up in the woods with her father, Ray, a former science teacher who tells her stories of plants, of the stars, of the origins of the Dakhóta people. Until, one morning, Ray doesn’t return from checking his traps. Told she has no family, Rosalie is sent to live with a foster family in nearby Mankato—where the reserved, bookish teenager meets rebellious Gaby Makespeace, in a friendship that transcends the damaged legacies they’ve inherited. On a winter’s day many years later, Rosalie returns to her childhood home. A widow and mother, she has spent the previous two decades on her white husband’s farm, finding solace in her garden even as the farm is threatened first by drought and then by a predatory chemical company. Now, grieving, Rosalie begins to confront the past, on a search for family, identity, and a community where she can finally belong. In the process, she learns what it means to be descended from women with souls of iron—women who have protected their families, their traditions, and a precious cache of seeds through generations of hardship and loss, through war and the insidious trauma of boarding schools. Weaving together the voices of four indelible women, The Seed Keeper is a beautifully told story of reawakening, of remembering our original relationship to the seeds and, through them, to our ancestors.




The Wolf Keepers


Book Description

A high-stakes middle grade historical adventure through Yosemite National Park by the New York Times-bestselling author of Masterpiece. Twelve-year-old Lizzie Durango and her dad have always had a zoo to call their home. Lizzie spends her days watching the animals and taking note of their various behaviors. Though the zoo makes for a unique home, it's a hard place for Lizzie to make lasting friends. But all this changes one afternoon when she finds Tyler Briggs, a runaway who has secretly made the zoo his makeshift home. The two become friends and, just as quickly, stumble into a covert investigation involving the zoo wolves who are suddenly dying. Little do they know, this mystery will draw them into a high-stakes historical adventure involving the legend of John Muir as they try to navigate safely while lost in Yosemite National Park. A Christy Ottaviano Book




Finders Keepers


Book Description

Key Selling Points In this book a girl who loves to look for treasure discovers a mermaid instead. Finders Keepers is set in a small lake town in Saskatchewan, Canada. The themes of facing your fears and being open to new experiences are explored in this middle-grade novel. The author has written several fantasy fiction titles and knows the genre well. New, enhanced features (dyslexia-friendly font, cream paper, larger trim size) to increase reading accessibility for dyslexic and other striving readers.




Light on the Prairie


Book Description

Alongside sixty-two of Butcher's iconic photographs, "Light on the Prairie" conveys the irrepressible spirit of a man whose passion would give us a firsthand look at the men and women who settled the Great Plains.




A Generous Nature


Book Description

In homage to the actists and philanthropists whose individual visions helped to shape and preserve Oregon's natural treasures for future generations, A Generous Nature presents 21 biographical profiles of twentieth-century conservation leaders.




The Prairie Chicken Dance Tour


Book Description

The hilarious story of an unlikely group of Indigenous dancers who find themselves thrown together on a performance tour of Europe The Tour is all prepared. The Prairie Chicken dance troupe is all set for a fifteen-day trek through Europe, performing at festivals and cultural events. But then the performers all come down with the flu. And John Greyeyes, a retired cowboy who hasn't danced in fifteen years, finds himself abruptly thrust into the position of leading a hastily-assembled group of replacement dancers. A group of expert dancers they are not. There's a middle-aged woman with advanced arthritis, her nineteen-year-old niece who is far more interested in flirtations than pow-wow, and an enigmatic man from the U.S. -- all being chased by Nadine, the organizer of the original tour who is determined to be a part of the action, and the handsome man she picked up in a gas-station bathroom. They're all looking to John, who has never left the continent, to guide them through a world that he knows nothing about. As the gang makes its way from one stop to another, absolutely nothing goes as planned and the tour becomes a string of madcap adventures. The Prairie Chicken Dance Tour is loosely based -- like, hospital-gown loose -- on the true story of a group of Indigenous dancers who left Saskatchewan and toured through Europe in the 1970s. Dawn Dumont brings her signature razor-sharp wit and impeccable comedic timing to this hilarious, warm, and wildly entertaining novel.