At Sea on the Range: From Berkeley Radical to Arizona Homesteader,1934-1948

Winner of The Great Southwest Book Festival for Memoir (2025)

In the midst of the Great Depression, a heart-broken twenty-four-year-old, hoping to gain perspective on America’s problems as well as her own, fled to the Arizona desert. There she fell in love with and married a handsome but impoverished rancher. Far from being at “Home on the Range,” this Jewish UC Berkeley graduate was at sea on the range, with no telephone or electricity, struggling to cook black-eyed peas and sowbelly on a wood-burning stove, build a traditional adobe home, brand cattle, and run a dude ranch.

Lost for decades and never before published, this candid memoir by a prize-winning journalist is a thoughtful and humorous story of triumph over adversity. With twenty-two pages of historical photos, it will captivate those interested in:
   – The Great Depression
   – The American West
   – Women’s history
   – Jewish Studies
   – Eco-friendly practices
   – Back-to-the-land stories