Now, for the first time in paperback, here is the remarkable story of Sandra Day O’Connor’s family and early life, her journey to adulthood in the American Southwest that helped make her the woman she is today—the first female justice of the U.S. Supreme Court, and one of the most powerful women in America. In this illuminating and unusual book, Sandra Day O’Connor tells, with her brother, Alan, the story of the Day family, and of growing up on the harsh yet beautiful land of the Lazy B ranch in Arizona. Laced throughout these stories about three generations of the Day family, and everyday life on the Lazy B, are the lessons Sandra and Alan learned about the world, self-reliance, and survival, and how the land, people, and values of the Lazy B shaped them. This fascinating glimpse of life in the Southwest in the last century recounts an important time in American history, and provides an enduring portrait of an independent young woman on the brink of becoming one of the most prominent figures in America. From the Trade Paperback edition. "It isn't necessary to have ever set foot on a ranch to savor O'Connor and Day's beautifully conveyed reminiscence about growing up on the same piece of land where their parents and grandparents had lived and worked. This is an endearing memoir about a vanishing era, a place and a family that nurtured the feisty young girl who became an extraordinary woman." -Doris Kearns Goodwin "Sandra Day O'Connor and her brother, H. Alan Day, have taken all the themes of the conventional Western narrative-the roundup, the wild horses, the cattle and cattle stampedes, the rattlesnakes, the natural disasters like flash floods, and the colorful figures of cowboys-and transposed them from the usual narrative of the isolated, rootless male figure of the Western into the story of three generations of a family and their relationship to an arid and beautiful expanse of land on the border between Arizona and New Mexico. It's the story of what the land taught them and what it takes to survive under extremes of drought and distance. This is a book for every reader, whether interested in conservation, history, family dynamics, education, or just plain adventure." -Jill Ker Conway "There is a line in this book that says it all. 'The dust didn't settle on the ranch road for days after the wedding.' The wedding was that of Sandra Day O'Connor, and the road led to a ranch and a life called the Lazy B. This beautifully told story of the Lazy B will eventually settle on the reader and, like a magic dust of smiles and pleasures, stay there forever." -Jim Lehrer Sandra Day O'Connor was born in El Paso, Texas, and attended college and law school at Stanford University. She has been married to John O'Connor since 1952, and they have three sons. Nominated by President Reagan as associate justice of the United States Supreme Court, she took the oath of office on September 25, 1981, the first woman to do so. H. Alan Day is a lifelong rancher who, after graduation from the University of Arizona, managed the Day ranch, the Lazy B, for thirty years. He also purchased and ran ranches in Nebraska and South Dakota, where he established a wild-horse sanctuary that, under contract with the U.S. government, cared for fifteen hundred wild horses. He lives in Tucson. Chapter 1 Early Memories When Time, who steals our years away, Shall steal our pleasure, too, The Memory of the past will stay, And half our joys renew. -Thomas Moore, "Song" The earliest memory is of sounds. In a place of all-encompassing silence, any sound is something to be noted and remembered. When the wind is not blowing, it is so quiet you can hear a beetle scurrying across the ground or a fly landing on a bush. Occasionally an airplane flies overhead-a high-tech intrusion penetrating the agrarian peace. When the wind blows, as it often does, there are no trees to rustle and moan. But the wind whistles through any loose siding on the barn and causes any loose gate to bang into the fence post. It starts the windmills moving, turning, creaking. At night the sounds are magnified. Coyotes wail on the hillside, calling to each other or to the moon-a sound that sends chills up the spine. We snuggle deeper in our beds. What prey have the coyotes spotted? Why are they howling? What are they doing? Just before dawn the doves begin to call, with a soft cooing sound, starting the day with their endless search for food. The cattle nearby walk along their trail near the house, their hooves crunching on the gravel. An occasional moo to a calf or to another cow can be heard, or the urgent bawl of a calf that has lost contact with its mother, or the low insistent grunt, almost a growl, of a bull as it walks steadily along to the watering trough or back out to the pasture. The two huge windmills turn in the wind, creaking as they revolve to face the breeze, and producing the clank of the sucker rods as they rise and fall with each turn of the huge fan of