"The country in which I grew up - the rugged areas of southwestern Colorado - was changing rapidly in the 1930s. I sensed that something unique in the nation's experience was ending, and I tried to capture a segment of the passing on paper - the breakup of the great cattle ranches and mines and the last efforts of the old-timers to hang on in the face of declining profits and increasing mechanization they themselves could not afford" - David Lavender. 'Believe me, David Lavender can write. He can make you laugh; he can make people come alive in print' - "Book Week". 'His story is realistic and readable...Nor does he spread any gloss on the hardships. He does, however, put on record some of the most engaging characters in the modern literature of the West. He makes it understandable why he says that, after damning the country mightily, one comes to an absurd affection for the particular part of it he has most reason to hate' - "New York Times".