When my grandmother, Leora Marie Banning, was 18 and a new bride, she sailed to South America to join her new husband’s family on their cattle ranch. Far from civilization on the plains of Argentina, she struggled to adjust to the rough life of the Pampas, to be accepted for herself, and to realize what loving her husband demanded. She learned to make ostrich egg omelets for breakfast, converse in Spanish with the gauchos, and wear “bombaches,” the baggy, calf-length pants worn by the Argentine cowhands.

Then, camped a thousand miles from Buenos Aires, she discovered she was pregnant; the battle to save herself and her child challenged everything she believed in.

This fictionalized short memoir is based on stories and remembrances of the Argentine which my grandmother related to me while I was growing up. The photographs included in the book are those Grandmother actually took with her little Brownie box camera. The cover photo is Grandmother Banning at age 18.

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