Yuma Public Library

Begun in Little Britches and Man of the Family, this is the continuing saga of Ralph Moody. In 1918, young Moody and his buddy Lonnie travel through the Southwest in an old Ford named Shiftless, camp in an Arizona canyon and "shake the nickel bush" by sculpting busts of lawyers and bankers.

Fortified with Yankee ingenuity and western can-do energy, the Moody family, transplanted from New England, builds a new life on a Colorado ranch early in the twentieth century. Father has died and Little Britches shoulders the responsibilities of a man at age eleven.--From publisher description.

The fatherless Moody family moves from Colorado to Massachusetts in 1912, when Ralph enters his teens. There, he discovers that 'just little things that would have been all right in Colorado' now get him into trouble. He is sent to his grandfather's farm in Maine, where he finds adventures.

"In the early 1920s cowboy and dry-range farmer, Ralph Moody found himself with mountainous debts through the collapse of the livestock market, a the dealings of a crooked partner. He faces the choice of declaring bankruptcy before he turns twenty, or working off the intimidating balance against him. His fortunes seem to be turning when a flash flood takes all he owns, and he is forced to auction off his farm and animals. Ralph never surrenders,...

Little Britches becomes the "man" in his family after his father's early death, taking on the concomitant responsibilities as well as opportunities. During the summer of his twelfth year he works on a cattle ranch in the shadow of Pike's Peak, earning a dollar a day. Little Britches is tested against seasoned cowboys on the range and in the corral. He drives cattle through a dust storm, eats his weight in flapjacks, and falls in love with a blue outlaw...