Like No Other Place

Like No Other Place: The Sandhills of Nebraska, Photographs and Stories
by David A Owen [978.232 Owe]

One of the items on David Owen's bucket list was to live a place totally different from his home in urban Connecticut for a few years. Owen explained "Whenever Anne and I traveled, I wondered what it would be like to live in this place or that for a long enough period of time to get a solid and thoughtful sense of the history, the memories and the stories; of the beliefs and values; of how weather and geography formed the living there; of the diet and the spirituality; of how all of this orders and shapes the routine of daily life." A chance remark by a classmate at photographic workshop in Maine led David Owen to consider the Sandhills. The classmate talked about the beauty of the Sandhills where he had grown up. The comment stayed in David Owen's mind. He and his wife, Anne, decided to vacation in western Nebraska and see these rolling hills. They camped at Lake McConaughy and drove the two-lane highways that cut through the sparse landscape. Owen said that he knew this was the place that he wanted to be when he saw the way the light played over the land; "the strong summer light raised a subtle richness of shadows that brought out every latent curve, depression and angle. This was the place. The Sandhills was where I wanted to be." David Owen packed a small U-haul truck and moved to the Sandhills, specifically Ellsworth, Nebraska (population 32). His landlady, Kathie Bixby, introduced Owen to small town life and ranching in the Sandhills. He documented his time in Nebraska with his camera and with his pen. The result is this fine book filled with black and white photos of life in this vast prairie branded by fences. No detail escaped his lens -- not the pegboards of wrenches or the racks of ear tags hanging in the Ashby Ranch store. His essays describe events such as praise parties in rich detail, down to the food served at the potluck dinners and songs and hymns sung. And there are stories about the people such as Heidi Ostrander, who, after earning a degree in Accounting at Chadron State College in 2003, chose to return to the family ranch. This is a book about people and the land that provides them with economic and emotional sustenance. It is a fine work. -- recommended by Donna G. - Virtual Services Department

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