Outskirts Press, INC.

Of the blooms that filled the window boxes of each sod house, “it seemed that in some way they understood that love was trying to soften the hardships and add a little beauty.”

As a little girl in 1886, Adda Blanche (Doughty) Brookhart moved with her family from Missouri to homestead “the west,” where land awaited those who claimed it. Adda writes these memories of her childhood long after her own seven children were grown and after a career as a school teacher, a business partner, and a public official. She tenderly relates the struggles her own family faced and those shared by the pioneers who came to settle the eastern plains of Colorado. She wanted her ancestors to have “…some little idea of the things as they were during my life span.” Her oldest son, Lester, wrote his own story that weaves Adda’s story with his own. He describes being born and raised at the turn-of-the twentieth century, including his experiences during WWI, WWII, living through the Spanish Flu epidemic of 1918, and more.