Twenty Miles from a Match: Homesteading in Western Nevada - Paperback

by Sarah E. Olds (Author)

Twenty Miles From a Match, originally published in 1978, is the autobiography of an indomitable woman and her family's twenty years of adventures and misadventures in a desert wilderness. In 1908, a venturesome woman named Sarah Olds packed up her brood and went homesteading in the deserts north of Reno, west of Sutcliffe on Pyramid Lake. Her ailing husband said, welcoming her to their new home, "There, old lady. There's your home, and it's damn near in the heart of Egypt." Olds tells of the hardships, frustrations, poverty, and other tribulations her family suffered from shortly after the turn of the century until well into the Great Depression. Through it all, however, runs a thread of humor, cheerfulness, and the ability to laugh at adversity. The foreword is by her daughter, Leslie Olds Zurfluh, the fourth of Sarah and A. J. Olds's six children.

Author Biography

Sarah Olds (1875-1963) was born in Iowa and followed her siblings out west after the death of her parents to make a living as a dressmaker. Shortly after meeting her husband and starting a family, the Olds clan moved to Nevada from California. They established a homestead between Reno and Pyramid Lake.