title: Lorelei's Bricks
author: Kuhnke, Jean L.
description: As a young girl, Lorelei Gray Anderson wanted more out of life than pouring tea and stitching pillows.  When she complained about learning only housekeeping tasks, her father tried to show her the difference between woman’s work and the hard labor men did each day.  Arranging with a local brickyard to put her to work making bricks, he waited for her to realize her place in society as a girl.
  To his surprise, she was enamored with the process of turning mud into a hard building material.  Five years of summer work at the brickyard turned her into a qualified artisan but because she was a woman, she would not be taken seriously.
  Leaving her hometown before her father could force her into an unwanted marriage; she found a short-term job to hold her over until she could venture west to a homestead with clay deposits to start her own brickyard.
  Meeting a crusty old widower and his two sons that were interested in the timber on her land, they worked together to make their way through difficult times.