Shaking the Nickel Bush
Author:
Ralph Moody Complete Authored Works
Illustrator:
Tran Mawicke
Publication:
1962 by W.W. Norton & Company Inc
Genre:
Autobiographical Novel, Westerns
Series:
The Little Britches Series
Series Number: 6
Pages:
235
Current state:
This book has been evaluated and information added. It has been read but content considerations may not be complete.
Book Guide
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Ralph Moody's recollections of his preteen years began with Little Britches—a book so well beloved by the American reading public that since its publication in 1950 it has gone through 18 printings.
In this new book Mr. Moody recalls his experiences when, at the age of nineteen, he was told he had only six months to live. In order to seize a faint chance for health, and in any case to relieve his widowed mother of a burden and to have a last taste of what he enjoyed most, Ralph went to Arizona looking for work as a cowhand.
But times were hard (it was during the recession following World War I) and Ralph and a buddy he met in the Tucson stockyards never did land the kind of jobs they were looking for.
Yet Ralph—as readers of his several books of reminiscence have come to know—always seemed to grow tougher and bigger and more determined as challenges and obstacles became more difficult. On the point of starvation he made a grubstake by doing horse-falls for a low-budget movie outfit. Then, exploiting a native artistic talent, he set himself up as an itinerant sculptor and earned far more than he could have earned as a cowhand. At then end, in quite unforeseen circumstances, he is on his way back to his old home in Colorado.
This is Moody at his best—humorous, wholesome, nostalgic, heartwarming.
From the dust jacket
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Reviews
Little Britches #6: Shaking the Nickel Bush
Reviewed by Sara Masarik
We know from the beginning of this book that Ralph was passed over for the draft in WWI because he was the head of a fatherless family. Regardless, Ralph tries to enlist and is rejected for medical reasons. Wanting to contribute to the war effort, Ralph works in a munitions plant throughout the war. When the armistice is signed, Ralph returns home and is dangerously skinny. After a series of tests, the specialists diagnose him with diabetes and give him just six months to live. Mercifully, Ralph’s family physician does not agree with the specialists’ prognosis. Instead, Dr. Gaghan recommends that Ralph move west.
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