My Flint Hills

Between the Nebraska border and Osage County, Oklahoma, are the Flint Hills of Kansas, and growing on those hills the last of the tallgrass prairie that once ranged from Canada to Texas, and on those fields of bluestem, cattle grazeand tending the cattle, someone like Jim Hoy, whose people have ranched there from, well, not quite time immemorial, but pretty darn close.Hoy has always called the Flint Hills home and over the decades he has made a study of themtheir tough terrain and quiet beauty, their distinctive folk life and cattle cultureand marshaled his observations to bring the Flint Hills home to readers in a singular way. These essays are Hoys Flint Hills, combining family lore and anecdotes of ranching life with reflections on the regions rich history and nature. Whether its weaning calves or shoeing horses, checking in on a local legend or a night of high school basketball in nearby Cassoday, encountering a coyote or a badger or surveying whats happened to the tallgrass prairie over time, summoning cowboy traditions or parsing the places plant life or rock formations, he has something to sayand you can bet its well worth hearing. With his keen eye, understated wit, and store of knowledge, Hoy makes his Flint Hills come alive, and in the telling, live on.