{"product_id":"where-the-bluestem-stands-birdies-story-paperback","title":"WHERE THE BLUESTEM STANDS Birdie's Story - Paperback","description":"\u003cdiv\u003e\u003cp style=\"text-align: right;\"\u003e\u003ca href=\"https:\/\/reportcopyrightinfringement.com\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"nofollow\"\u003e\u003cb\u003eReport copyright infringement\u003c\/b\u003e\u003c\/a\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\u003c\/div\u003e\u003cp\u003eby \u003cb\u003eJeffrey Rittenhouse\u003c\/b\u003e (Author)\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eKansas is blowing away.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eIn the spring of 1934, Birdie Marsh drives back to her grandmother's farm outside Willow Creek with everything she owns in the truck bed, two daughters beside her on the seat, and a bank note coming due in six months, she has no clear way to pay. The Townsend Farm has been sitting empty, the chicken coop home to fourteen hens and not much else. Birdie has the deed, the ground, and the conviction that her grandmother's farm will not be lost on her watch.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eWhat she builds from that beginning surprises even her.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eStarting with a dinner order she cannot fill alone, Birdie begins buying eggs from neighboring farm women and selling them under the Townsend Farm name. Then preserves. Then a standing account with a store on Second Street in Dodge City and a line on the Cattlemen's Hotel menu. One by one, three farm families join the network: Clara Eberly, raising her son alone on a widowed farm. Helen Calloway, whose husband's failing health has put everything at risk. Lydia Unruh, a Mennonite matriarch who has kept her community to itself for fifty years, decides, after careful consideration, that this arrangement is correct arithmetic.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eThe note gets paid. The name goes on a shelf in Dodge. And then the real work begins.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eThrough the winter and into a spring that turns darker than anyone expects, Birdie tends the operation and the women in it, reckoning with a daughter who is teaching herself algebra and another who negotiated sunflowers into the garden plan on the grounds that they don't have to be a preserve; they can just be there. The Townsend Farm becomes something beyond one farm's story.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eThen the sky turns black.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eApril 14, 1935. Black Sunday. The worst storm of the Dust Bowl decade rolls across the Kansas plain and tests everything Birdie has put into the ground - the crops, the flock, the network, the name. What holds and what blows away comes down to the same thing it has always come down to on this prairie: roots. How deep they go. How long ago were they planted? Whether the people who built this ground knew to leave the native grass along the fence lines.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eWhere the Bluestem Stands is a novel about what it means to hold on to something worth holding. About the arithmetic of survival and the harder arithmetic of building a life that outlasts a crisis. About women who kept farms and kept each other and put their names on jars that traveled further than they did.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eBirdie Marsh came back to her grandmother's farm to save it. What she discovers is that saving it was only the first thing. The rest followed.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eBook Three in the Where the Bluestem Grows series. Can be read as a standalone novel.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n            \u003cdiv\u003e\n\u003cstrong\u003eNumber of Pages:\u003c\/strong\u003e 206\u003c\/div\u003e\n            \u003cdiv\u003e\n\u003cstrong\u003eDimensions:\u003c\/strong\u003e 0.44 x 9 x 6 IN\u003c\/div\u003e\n            \u003cdiv\u003e\n\u003cstrong\u003ePublication Date:\u003c\/strong\u003e June 10, 2026\u003c\/div\u003e\n            ","brand":"BooksCloud","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":54090086023475,"sku":"9798240941757","price":24.26,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0300\/5595\/6612\/files\/FS_ZWOBaz29798240941757.webp?v=1789599392","url":"https:\/\/www.vysn.com\/en-ca\/products\/where-the-bluestem-stands-birdies-story-paperback","provider":"VYSN","version":"1.0","type":"link"}