I’m a Nebraskan. And I’m hopelessly biased to Nebraska. There are few books I love reading more than real-life accounts of pioneers, especially when those pioneers filed homesteads in Nebraska and set to work turning a frontier into civilization.
No Time on My Hands is the true story of a woman named Grace Snyder who did just that. Grace grew up outside of Cozad during the late 1800s and faced the same problems that a lot of Little House on the Prairie era settlers did: lack of water (at least within walking distance), storms, too much farm work needing to be done in too little time.
Looking back on her growing up years in a sod house with a large family and plenty of work to be done, Grace took an interesting view of it. She felt that she had been singularly blessed to have no extra time on her hands.
In an easy-to-read style, Grace reminisces about both the trials her family faced and the joys. Drought. Sickness. Picnics and outings. Some of the stories were just plain funny.
At the beginning of the book, Grace writes, “As a child of seven and up, I wished that I might grow up to make the most beautiful quilts in the world, to marry a cowboy, and to look down on the top of a cloud. At the time I dreamed those dreams and wished those wishes, it seemed impossible that any of them could every come true.”
But one by one, each of those dreams did come true–not just by dreaming but by a lot of hard work and stamina.
I’ve read No Time on My Hands twice. First by myself, and then again when my family it read it aloud together. Even the little ones jumped up and down whenever we picked up the book. That’s a pretty good test, right?
This is history told in its most living form. Read it. You won’t regret it.