num_pages: 238
description: Mine might have been a simple pretty story if not for the wolves. In late July they emerged from the foothills . . .In this gripping memoir of a young man a wolf their parallel lives and ultimate collision Bryce Andrews describes life on the remote windswept Sun Ranch in southwest Montana. The Suns twenty thousand acres of rangeland occupy a still-wild corner of southwest Montanaa high valley surrounded by mountain ranges and steep creeks with portentous names like Grizzly Dead Man and Bad Luck. Just over the border from Yellowstone National Park the Sun holds giant herds of cattle and elk amid many predatorsbears mountain lions and wolves. In lyrical haunting language Andrews recounts marathon days and nights of building fences riding roping and otherwise learning the hard business of caring for cattle an initiation that changes him from an idealistic city kid into a skilled ranch hand. But when wolves suddenly begin killing the ranchs cattle Andrews has to shoulder a rifle chase the pack and do what hed hoped he would never have to do. Badluck Way is about transformation and complications about living with dirty hands every day. It is about the hard choices that wake us at night and take a lifetime to reconcile. Above all Badluck Way celebrates the breathtaking beauty of wilderness and the satisfaction of hard work on some of the harshest most beautiful land in the world. Called an important meditation on what it means to share space and breathe the same air as truly wild animals (Tom Groneberg author of The Secret Life of Cowboys) Badluck Way is the memorable story of one young mans rebirth in the crucible of the Wests timeless landscape a place at the center of the hearts geography savage and gorgeous in equal measure.
language: English
title: Badluck Way: A Year on the Ragged Edge of the West
publisher: Atria Books