By Way of Hope is a regional best seller.  It is obviously written from the heart.

By Way of Hope is a remarkable piece of history, not only for the settlement of one area but for the entire state.

By Way of Hope opens the door to the past and makes it a pleasure to visit a time that is gone forever.

By Way of Hope should resonate with those of us who have family trees rooted in the homesteaders of Montana and North Dakota.

I finished By Way of Hope at 5 a.m. and did not want it to end.

By Way of Hope is the best memoir I have ever read.  It sings.

Thanks again for writing a wonderful book.  What a treasure that is!

To order your own copy of
BY WAY OF HOPE
Send a check for $15.95
plus $3.00 shipping/handling to:

Coolbrook Publishing
C/O Colleen Lulf
Box 625
Fort Benton, MT 59442

or call 406-622-3652

By Way of Hope is a memoir and a true story about three women homesteaders.  One of the women is the author's mother Grace, another his aunt Rachel, and the third his grandmother Eliza.

The youngest of four, Dwyer was two years old when his homesteader father died.  Although his mother Grace Taylor Dwyer was a small woman, five feet, one inch tall, she handled the farm's horse teams - doing what was then considered man's work.  She did all the tasks necessary to feed, clothe and educate her young family.   The book includes reflections of the author about growing up with his siblings on a priarie homestead on the windswept quarter section of real estate in w estern North Dakota .  The family lived in a tarpaper homestead shack, intended by the homesteader as a temporary shelter to serve only until the structure could be replaced by more suitable shelter.  The family lived through two bank closures, wiping out their cash, and through the Great Depression.

Grace Dwyer's oldest sister Rachel pioneered the homesteading movement for the family.  She was a rural school teacher in the winter of 1903 when a land developer suggested that he and his associates would build a shack for her in the area recently opened for homesteading in what would become McKenzie County along the western border of North Dakota .   Armed with a description of the homestead, she filed her claim at the land office in Minot late in 1903.  She would have to occupy the shack within six months or lose her filing fee.  In May of the following spring, she rowed across the Missouri River , running at flood stage, to be transported by wagon to her new home.  She found her shack lacked any standard furnishings, some boxes which would serve as chairs, a makeshift table, and a pile of hay which would serve as a bed.

Meanwhile, the author's grandmother, Eliza Robinson Taylor, was providing for her family by making rag rugs in the families small home in Hope , North Dakota .  In 1905 her invalid husband died.  As a widow, she was then eligible to homestead.  She convinced another widow with small children to join her in homesteading near Rachel's land.  Mrs. Taylor and Julia Thurlow filed claims in July and began making plans to move early in the fall.  Their plans were sidetracked when one of Mrs. Thurlow's children became ill with a life-threatening illness setting back a possible move.  They did move in November, their possessions and livestock shipped by boxcar to Williston , North Dakota .  The families arrived at their homestead sites two days later as the season's first snow blanketed the area.  It was the beginning of a severe winter.

Looking Back in Black and White:
42 years as a Montana Newsman

By Terry Dwyer

Terry Dwyer began his career as a cub reporter with the Independent Record in Helena, Montana. In 1953 he joined the staff of the Great Falls Tribune. He rose through the ranks of reporter and City Editor. Terry retired in 1988 after 42 years as a newsman having achieved the title of Managing Editor and Vice President. Terry still resides in Great Falls with his wife, Dolly.

In this, his second book, Dwyer recounts his newspaper experiences and includes selected columns.