Lazy B

Long before she sat on the nation's highest court, Sandra Day O'Connor was a child on the Lazy B, a cattle ranch in the Arizona desert country that her family worked for generations. Written with her brother, Alan Day, this memoir traces the history of the Day family and the childhood the two siblings shared on that demanding, strikingly beautiful land.

The book moves through three generations of the family and through the ordinary rhythms of ranch life. Along the way, the authors describe what the Lazy B taught them about self-reliance, about getting by when conditions were against them, and about how the world works. The land itself, the people who lived and worked on it, and the values held there left a lasting mark on both of them.

The result is a portrait of life in the American Southwest during the last century, a way of living that has largely passed. It is also a look at the early years of a young woman raised with independence and toughness, years that came before she became the first woman to serve as a justice of the U.S. Supreme Court.