High, Wide and Lonesome

Hal Borland migrated with his parents to the still unsettled, windswept high plains of eastern Colorado to take advantage of the Homestead Act. There they built a house from scratch, raised livestock, and worked hard living off the land. High, Wide and Lonesome is Borland’s fascinating first-hand account through the eyes of that 10-year-old boy who faced the challenges of the start of the twentieth century.

It was a hard life. The harsh weather and unforgiving conditions of the western Prairielands gave life and death significance to the essential tasks of providing food, water, and warmth for themselves.  At the same time, the hardships of the frontier landscape forced resilient pioneer families like the Borlands to develop strong bonds, simple values, and sincere appreciations for the beauty and natural rhythms of the open range. Together they learned fundamental truths about love, commitment, courage, and the bittersweet passage of time. 

The raw experiences described formed and defined the young Hal Borland. This memoir is a fascinating, unvarnished, historical autobiography of life and survival on the frontier of America’s real wild west.