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Texas Panhandle #1
The Wind Blows Free
Homesteading in the 1890's. The Texas Panhandle was only just beginning to be homesteaded by farmers--called nesters. Forced to give up his store in East Texas, Mr. Pierce introduces his family to the daunting challenge of life in a sod hut on the windswept plain. While the move offers a prospect of something new to irrepressible little Carolyn and unending adventure to the lively twins, Bert and Dick, it promises to be an ordeal of labor and isolation for Mama, Melinda and timid Katie. 14-year-old Melinda Pierce, the oldest child and most reluctant pioneer, is especially dismayed. She has given up her friends and happy town life, for this? She clings tightly to her grandmother's promise that when Melinda is 16 she may return to East Texas and join her friends at Lewisville Academy for Young Females. It is this hope, and her mother's dauntless example, which get Melinda through the first difficult weeks. Before long, however, Melinda is caught up in the compelling beauty of this land of wind and wide horizons, with its adventures and with its gift of new friendship. She finds herself joining wholeheartedly with the other members of her family in their determination to answer the challenge of the Panhandle and make it home. This is the first of three stories about the Texas Panhandle, each highlighting one of the Pierce family daughters.
271 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 1952
11 people are currently reading
184 people want to read
About the author
Loula Grace Erdman
26 books10 followersERDMAN, LOULA GRACE (1898–1976). Loula Grace Erdman, writer, daughter of August F. and Mollie (Maddox) Erdman, was born on June 8, 1898, near Alma, Lafayette County, Missouri. She attended Central Missouri State College (B.S., 1931) and Columbia University (M.A., 1941). She also studied at the University of Wisconsin, the University of Southern California, and West Texas State College. She subsequently moved to Texas and taught in the Amarillo public schools and at West Texas State College, where she eventually became novelist-in-residence and director of the Advanced Workshop in Creative Writing.
Erdman began writing in the 1930s, and by 1946 about fifty of her short stories and magazine articles had been published, as well as her first juvenile novel, Separate Star (1944), a book about career teaching. In 1946 she won the $10,000 Dodd, Mead-Redbook Award for The Years of the Locust (1947), a novel set in her native Missouri. In 1952 she received the American Girl-Dodd, Mead Award for The Wind Blows Free (1952), the first volume of a juvenile trilogy about a pioneer Panhandle family. She continued the story of the Pierce family in The Wide Horizon (1956) and The Good Land (1959). Room to Grow (1962), a novel about French immigrants who moved to the Panhandle via New Orleans, won her the Texas Institute of Letters Juvenile Award. She received both the Texas Institute of Letters Award and the Steck-Vaughn Award for A Bluebird Will Do (1973). Her other works include A Wonderful Thing and Other Stories (1940), Fair Is the Morning (1945), Lonely Passage (1948), The Edge of Time (1950), Three at the Wedding (1953), My Sky Is Blue (1953), The Far Journey (1955), Short Summer (1958), Many a Voyage (1960), The Man Who Told the Truth (1962), Life Was Simpler Then (1963), Another Spring (1966), Bright Sky (1969), A Time to Write (1969), and Save Weeping for the Night (1975).
Miss Erdman was a member of the Texas Institute of Letters, the Panhandle Penwomen, Delta Kappa Gamma, Kappa Delta Pi, and Phi Kappa Phi. As a career teacher who never considered abandoning teaching even after she gained recognition as a writer, she also belonged to the National Education Association and the Texas State Teachers Association.
Erdman began writing in the 1930s, and by 1946 about fifty of her short stories and magazine articles had been published, as well as her first juvenile novel, Separate Star (1944), a book about career teaching. In 1946 she won the $10,000 Dodd, Mead-Redbook Award for The Years of the Locust (1947), a novel set in her native Missouri. In 1952 she received the American Girl-Dodd, Mead Award for The Wind Blows Free (1952), the first volume of a juvenile trilogy about a pioneer Panhandle family. She continued the story of the Pierce family in The Wide Horizon (1956) and The Good Land (1959). Room to Grow (1962), a novel about French immigrants who moved to the Panhandle via New Orleans, won her the Texas Institute of Letters Juvenile Award. She received both the Texas Institute of Letters Award and the Steck-Vaughn Award for A Bluebird Will Do (1973). Her other works include A Wonderful Thing and Other Stories (1940), Fair Is the Morning (1945), Lonely Passage (1948), The Edge of Time (1950), Three at the Wedding (1953), My Sky Is Blue (1953), The Far Journey (1955), Short Summer (1958), Many a Voyage (1960), The Man Who Told the Truth (1962), Life Was Simpler Then (1963), Another Spring (1966), Bright Sky (1969), A Time to Write (1969), and Save Weeping for the Night (1975).
Miss Erdman was a member of the Texas Institute of Letters, the Panhandle Penwomen, Delta Kappa Gamma, Kappa Delta Pi, and Phi Kappa Phi. As a career teacher who never considered abandoning teaching even after she gained recognition as a writer, she also belonged to the National Education Association and the Texas State Teachers Association.
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Displaying 1 - 17 of 17 reviews
May 10, 2019
First sentence: Melinda Pierce sat on the green plush seat of the railroad car, listening to the mocking song the wheels of the train were singing. All the way up from East Texas they had said the same thing--"Going away. Going away. Going away," they wailed. And sometimes they added, "Poor Melinda. Poor, poor Melinda."
Premise/plot: Set in the Texas Panhandle in the 1890s, The Wind Blows Free introduces us to the Pierce family. The father has lost his store and is resettling the family from East Texas to the Texas Panhandle. It will require more than a little adjusting. For example, going from wood or coal as a fuel source to COW CHIPS, or, going from a house with floors and carpets to a dirt floor. Melinda knows that she will not like it here; she is counting down the months, weeks, days, and hours until she can go back East. Her grandmother has promised that she can attend a high school back in East Texas--the same one her mother attended, I believe. But when the time comes will she be ready to say goodbye to her family?
My thoughts: In the 1950s, Loula Grace Erdman wrote a historical trilogy set in the Texas Panhandle. Each book was narrated by a Pierce sister. The first book by the oldest, Melinda, the second book by the middle sister, Katie, the third book by the youngest, Carolyn. (There are NO BOOKS on the twins, Bert and Dick.) The novels are not necessarily dependent on one another. The age of each heroine happens to be fifteen. So in some cases, quite a few years have gone by since the previous book. But of course, if you've got access to all three books, I'd recommend reading them in order!
For those interested in pioneer stories, this will prove an interesting read. It isn't quite the same time period of the Little House books (it's set a few decades later), but the pioneer-feel is the same.
I enjoyed this one more the second time. (I first read it in April 2012.) I gave more attention to the relationships this time around--notably that of Melinda and Dennis Kennedy and Melinda and Annie Foster.
This one is not what you'd call politically correct. It was written in the early 1950s and set in the 1890s. Native Americans are called Indians. The Pierce children especially seem afraid of potentially encountering Indians. They become a little bit more comfortable with the move after being assured that all the Indians are now living on reservations. The mother has passed along a family story or two of a past Indian encounter. This would be with the great-great-grandmother in Georgia. This story both thrills and frightens with each retelling. The girls go through a 'scary' encounter with an Indian that turns out to be TALL GRASS. It is what it is. I don't know that it does any good to pretend that history was different than what it was or to make fictional heroines radically counter the culture and times in which they lived.
I didn't grow up reading The Wind Blows Free. But I did grow up reading the second book in the series, The Wide Horizon. It was one of my favorites growing up.
Premise/plot: Set in the Texas Panhandle in the 1890s, The Wind Blows Free introduces us to the Pierce family. The father has lost his store and is resettling the family from East Texas to the Texas Panhandle. It will require more than a little adjusting. For example, going from wood or coal as a fuel source to COW CHIPS, or, going from a house with floors and carpets to a dirt floor. Melinda knows that she will not like it here; she is counting down the months, weeks, days, and hours until she can go back East. Her grandmother has promised that she can attend a high school back in East Texas--the same one her mother attended, I believe. But when the time comes will she be ready to say goodbye to her family?
My thoughts: In the 1950s, Loula Grace Erdman wrote a historical trilogy set in the Texas Panhandle. Each book was narrated by a Pierce sister. The first book by the oldest, Melinda, the second book by the middle sister, Katie, the third book by the youngest, Carolyn. (There are NO BOOKS on the twins, Bert and Dick.) The novels are not necessarily dependent on one another. The age of each heroine happens to be fifteen. So in some cases, quite a few years have gone by since the previous book. But of course, if you've got access to all three books, I'd recommend reading them in order!
For those interested in pioneer stories, this will prove an interesting read. It isn't quite the same time period of the Little House books (it's set a few decades later), but the pioneer-feel is the same.
I enjoyed this one more the second time. (I first read it in April 2012.) I gave more attention to the relationships this time around--notably that of Melinda and Dennis Kennedy and Melinda and Annie Foster.
This one is not what you'd call politically correct. It was written in the early 1950s and set in the 1890s. Native Americans are called Indians. The Pierce children especially seem afraid of potentially encountering Indians. They become a little bit more comfortable with the move after being assured that all the Indians are now living on reservations. The mother has passed along a family story or two of a past Indian encounter. This would be with the great-great-grandmother in Georgia. This story both thrills and frightens with each retelling. The girls go through a 'scary' encounter with an Indian that turns out to be TALL GRASS. It is what it is. I don't know that it does any good to pretend that history was different than what it was or to make fictional heroines radically counter the culture and times in which they lived.
I didn't grow up reading The Wind Blows Free. But I did grow up reading the second book in the series, The Wide Horizon. It was one of my favorites growing up.
March 27, 2016
This series of books would be enjoyed by anyone who likes the Laura Ingalls Wilder books, and I wish they were more available to today's readers. I loved them when I was growing up. I felt a closeness to the Pierce sisters because I, too, lived on a farm, and though NE CO wasn't as flat as W TX, you could still look for miles and see nothing but land and sky. And, like the Pierce girls, I both loved the land and sometimes wished to be somewhere else.
This book tells the story of Melinda, the oldest girl in the Pierce family, who is 14 when they move from East Texas to the panhandle. They go from city life to a dugout house, from burning wood and coal to using sow chips for fuel, from neighbors on all sides to not seeing anyone but family for months at a time. The transition is tough for Melinda, but she comforts herself with the knowledge that when she's 15 she'll go back east to live with her grandmother and attend a girl's school with her friends. Of course she has no idea how much one year on the prairie can change a person...
There are three books in the series, each focusing on one of the girls. I haven't read them for years but am enjoying revising the sisters and their family and friends.
This book tells the story of Melinda, the oldest girl in the Pierce family, who is 14 when they move from East Texas to the panhandle. They go from city life to a dugout house, from burning wood and coal to using sow chips for fuel, from neighbors on all sides to not seeing anyone but family for months at a time. The transition is tough for Melinda, but she comforts herself with the knowledge that when she's 15 she'll go back east to live with her grandmother and attend a girl's school with her friends. Of course she has no idea how much one year on the prairie can change a person...
There are three books in the series, each focusing on one of the girls. I haven't read them for years but am enjoying revising the sisters and their family and friends.
November 12, 2014
First published in 1957, this is the story of the pioneering Pierce family who move from East Texas to the Texas Panhandle in the 1890s where Mr. Pierce has taken a homestead and begun farming. Fourteen-year-old Melinda is reluctant to leave her family and friends behind in the city. She is promised that in a year and a half she can return to her grandmother in East Texas to attend the young ladies' academy where her mother went. Life in the Panhandle is difficult. Their nearest neighbors are a dirty, unkempt, illiterate family whom Melinda is reluctant to associate with. She'd rather associate with the proper Kennedys, especially teenage nephew Dennis who loves to read as much as she does. Melinda soon learns to appreciate the wide open country and blowing wind and to enjoy the company of her neighbors. When the time comes to return home, Melinda must make a difficult decision.
This is a great story for families! It reminded me a lot of the Little House series and deals with many of the same issues. The tone is a little preachy at points but overall, the story is well-written and worth a read for those who have devoured all of the Little House books a million times!
This is a great story for families! It reminded me a lot of the Little House series and deals with many of the same issues. The tone is a little preachy at points but overall, the story is well-written and worth a read for those who have devoured all of the Little House books a million times!
July 15, 2010
It is refreshing to visit a simpler time. This story takes place in pioneer times near Amarillo, Texas. Meet the Pierce family who begin their life on the prairie in a dugout after their store burned down in East Texas. It will tickle your funny bone in places and warm your in others!
August 19, 2012
The prairie in the 1890's was wild, dangerous and free. When a family moves out West to live on a homestead, some of the family members are less than thrilled but they have to learn to live in their new environment and even come to love it and the way the wind blows freely there.
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September 15, 2012Written in 1952 this wonderful historical book is as old as I am! A pioneer story of homesteaders in Texas. Their challenges were so realistic that I suffered with them. Good old fashioned family love and unity are central.
November 29, 2024
What a beautifully crafted story. It was a bit slow to start, but the last half was well worth it. the descriptions of the land were very easy to picture, and the tedium of survival was very clear - having to travel seven miles each way to collect barrels of water from the nearby well, no other water nearby, the house being dug into the ground to reduce the needed supplies due to the fact that they live on a vast grassland, no easy supply of wood available. And the isolation. The mother "married down" in life, and she bears the loss of comfits well enough, but she was trained to be a lady, and a lady she remains, even when dealing with her mostly illiterate neighbour family (who live some miles away). The main character is her oldest daughter, someone who tries her best, but struggles a lot with getting it right. It is a delightfully gentle Christian (some that are try bludgeoning the reader, but not this one.)
I absolutely adored it.
I absolutely adored it.
May 25, 2021
I will always be grateful that I recently found a Loula Grace Erdman book at an estate sale, because it launched me on an Erdman readathon.
This book, the first in a series, was excellent. Now on to "The Wide Horizon."
This book, the first in a series, was excellent. Now on to "The Wide Horizon."
May 20, 2017
It was pretty darn good I guess. I've read it more then once and liked it.
February 10, 2024
I read this to my older daughter. It's not as good as Laura Ingalls Wilder, but nothing is. We're looking forward to reading the rest of the series.
April 7, 2021
This so cute. I see a little bit of Anne and Gilbert in there relationship and a lot of Laura Ingalls Wilder in the feel of it. Really enjoyed wish there was more books like this today. And I just wish more people would read this book trilogy.
August 10, 2016
Most of us are familiar with the pioneer life in the Dakota’s at the end of the 19th century. This is a story of the pioneers who pushed out onto the Texas frontier. Fourteen year old Melinda Pierce is most miserable. She has been forced to give up the luxuries of a life in town for the dusty life in a dirt dugout and is prone to a few episodes of mild teenage angst. Life isn’t always fair, afterall. But life can be funny. Melinda learns all of this, and even that she can find joy by helping other people, through Erdman’s gentle humor and skillful story telling. While sometimes a tad predictable, the story is never dull and is a delight to read.
June 2, 2015
Not the best prairie story - not even close!
We were not happy with this title. The characters were not at all appealing - not even the 'heroine'! Her siblings are worse, and the parents are a confusing mix of reliability and unreliability. No one stays 'true to character' except the bratty little boys!
The writing style is not excellent either. There are strangely short, stilted, grammatically incorrect sentences sprinkled liberally throughout the book that we would hate for our children to mimic!
You can do better than this book. And we're still looking for a good prairie story! (Any recommendations, anyone?)
We were not happy with this title. The characters were not at all appealing - not even the 'heroine'! Her siblings are worse, and the parents are a confusing mix of reliability and unreliability. No one stays 'true to character' except the bratty little boys!
The writing style is not excellent either. There are strangely short, stilted, grammatically incorrect sentences sprinkled liberally throughout the book that we would hate for our children to mimic!
You can do better than this book. And we're still looking for a good prairie story! (Any recommendations, anyone?)
August 18, 2013
Judging the book by its cover, I was afraid this was going to be a really hokey story. I was wrong.
The story was good, about a family who moves to the panhandle in Texas and sets up a homestead. Yes, read it all in Laura Ingalls, but glad to have another viewpoint and another location. The family members are intersting, as is especially our main character, Melinda. She grows and changes throughout the novel. We also get a great learning about the landscape into which she moves: the dangers and the beauty of it all.
The story was good, about a family who moves to the panhandle in Texas and sets up a homestead. Yes, read it all in Laura Ingalls, but glad to have another viewpoint and another location. The family members are intersting, as is especially our main character, Melinda. She grows and changes throughout the novel. We also get a great learning about the landscape into which she moves: the dangers and the beauty of it all.
May 3, 2011
This is one of those books that has stuck with me over MANY years *cough* I have to go find a copy for my daughter now that it's in my head again!
April 22, 2008
It's kind of funny.
July 14, 2017
I read this and the other 2 novels in this series as a child and remember it being very good!
Displaying 1 - 17 of 17 reviews