Riding the White Horse Home

About this book

In 1886, Teresa Jordan's great-grandfather J.L. Jordan left Maryland for the West. It was on Wyoming's Iron Mountain that the Jordan ranch began and survived for nearly a hundred years. Riding the White Horse Home is Teresa Jordan's story of four generations of her family's devotion to the land, a devotion that required at once physical courage and psychic endurance. She celebrates the strength and character of the women of her family - her mother, grandmother, and great-aunts; the men - her father, grandfather, and great-grandfather; and the ranch hands - the hay crew, cooks, and cowboys. With reverence and grace, Teresa Jordan uses the history of her family to mirror the demise of a quintessential American way of life. This is not only Teresa Jordan's family history, it is every Western family's story: it is the story of the American West. Teresa Jordan writes of her family and of finding her place within its history with warmth, sincerity, and pride. It is only after she leaves Wyoming that she begins to understand the women of her history - some who were shoehorned into the only lives they could imagine, others who found ways to create the lives they wanted - and to discover where she belongs. Teresa Jordan's essays in Riding the White Horse Home are eloquent homage to her history and to ours as well.