It was the summer of ’43 on a Cariboo ranch. He was 12 and had to become a man. If you were a man, you could become a cowboy. Join the author on this nostalgic look back on the joys, frustrations and observations of growing up and discovering where he belongs.

Excerpt from Eldon Lee's foreword: “This book by Alan Fry is probably the best book ever written on ranch life in the Cariboo. His account of everyday events is so perceptive and so true to the mark that all we country types yearn to re-experience its joys, and its miseries."

The Ranch on the Cariboo is a good book and while it may not make a pretty sight to the tractor jockeys, by damn it is authentic; I should know because I was raised on a similar ranch just 18 miles north.”

Alan Fry's significance in B.C.'s literary history lies in his accurate and sometimes humourous portrayals of life on B.C. Indian reserves and the corresponding inflexibility of white officials, including police. Some of his titles have been reprinted but Fry's literary reputation has faded due to the constraints of `political correctness`.

Alan Fry was born and raised on a family ranch near Lac La Hache, B.C. in 1931. Although some of his ancestors were farming Quakers in Wiltshire, his grandfather Roger Fry, a member of the Fry family that prospered in the chocolate business, was a Cambridge graduate who kept company with the Bloomsbury Group. Fry is the author of The Ranch on the Cariboo, first published in 1962, about a teenager's introduction to manhood and ranching in the early 1940s.

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