Hard Times: “Child of Steens Mountain”

Child of Steens Mountain By Eileen O’Keeffe McVicker with Barbara J. Scott Oregon State University Press, 160 pages Child of Steens Mountain is Eileen O’Keeffe McVicker’s fascinating chronicle of her depression-era childhood on Steens Mountain in southeast Oregon and her adolescence spent in the nearby town of Burns. Her Irish immigrant father was a sheep rancher, and her story has a lot to teach readers about not just surviving, but getting the most out of life during hard times. Written with homey eloquence, it reads like a collection of a grandmother’s most memorable stories, and Barbara J. Scott, McVicker’s writing partner, has structured it into a compelling coming-of-age narrative. The small house in which the family of five lived lacked indoor plumbing, necessitating daily treks of a half-mile roundtrip to fill buckets with water from a mountain spring. When McVicker starts high school, she and her younger brother are sent to live in a cabin in town by themselves while their parents continued their ranch work. The kids have to run the household, feed themselves, do their homework, and arrive on time to school every day with no adult help....