The jump-off creek
(Book)

"A Mariner book" -- Title page.

Originally published in 1989 in hardcover by Houghton Mifflin.

Includes discussion questions.

"In the 1890s, Lydia Bennett Sanderson, a hardship-honed widow, leaves her old life behind and journey’s to Jump-Off Creek to make her way as a homesteader in the backcountry of Oregon. Her neighbors are few: Tim Whiteaker and Blue Odell are trying to make a go of it on their small hardscrabble ranch. Evelyn Walker is a young, lonely wife rearing her children in daunting isolation. And a trio of rootless cowboys have taken up squatters rights in the mountains, their only income the bounty from poisoned wolves. While Lydia toils into the summer, building fences, digging ditches, and repairing her little homestead cabin, Tim and Blue engage in a deadly spoilers game with the wolvers. As the months pass, there is good and ill fortune, the exchange of fair-and-square favors, and Lydia finds both courage and community in her determination to survive." -- Amazon.