"My parents and my three older sisters were already in the Model T Ford. I think it was old because it had no top. It was moving day. My dad had filed on a homestead and we were about to begin the two-hundred-mile trek from Watrous to Carrot River, Saskatchewan. My powder blue dress was scattered with tiny pink flowers. Mother had fashioned it from pieces that had once been part of a dress she had worn. To me, the move mattered not at all. The usual aura of family security prevailed. How could a child of barely five years know the hardships that lay ahead?"

Ileen (née Sheehan) Boechler's plainspoken memoir of a childhood spent homesteading beyond the 53rd parallel tugs at the roots of northern life, peeling back the layers of family and community connections to reveal the growth that is possible because of them.

Ileen Sheehan Boechler grew up on a homestead outside of Carrot River, Saskatchewan. She and her husband Ralph lived over 50 years in Saskatoon, where they raised their family. Ileen is a graduate of the University of Saskatchewan, a teacher, a competent seamstress, likes carpentry and enjoys interior decorating. She loves the outdoors and the occasional game of golf. This is her first book.

Ileen Boechler's profile page