No Life for a Lady

Why it’s on the list: Agnes Morley Cleaveland’s memoir of growing up working cattle on her family’s ranch in the Datil country of what is now Catron County, New Mexico — the title is a joke about what everyone told her the life was. A canonical Southwestern memoir, and a woman’s account of exactly the country my Luna research is thinnest on.

Where I heard about it

• Debbie Lee — recommended and annotated it alongside her four-part Catron County Centennial History, posted publicly by the Catron County Historical Society in April 2022. Her note: “Outstanding history around Datil NM.”

About this edition

Houghton Mifflin, 1941; still in print in the University of Nebraska Press Women of the West series.

Connections

• Agnes Morley Cleaveland — the author, one of the names Debbie Lee lists as important to the making of the county
• Meet Mr. Grizzly — the same Datil country from a man’s side; Pie Town Woman — the same country a generation later
• Catron County · Ranches of Catron County