Review: "The Last Cows" by Kathryn Wilder

The Last Cows by Kathryn Wilder
Published November 2025 via Bison Books
★★★★

Sometimes I dream about moving out West and living closer to the sky. It's not my life, but maybe in another one. In the meantime, I'm drawn to books like this: Wilder's wandering look at decades of ranching and cowboying, parenting and grandparenting, trying to balance what makes sense economically against what is best for the land.

This was a relatively slow read for me, partly because it's not really the sort of book with a lot of plot (character development, yes; A–Z plot, no) and partly because it's just quiet, lovely writing, and I didn't feel a need to rush it. Wilder takes readers through some family and land history and some of the considerations of raising cattle on public lands (the short version: public land =/= cheap or easy), but mostly it's quiet moments in cabins and searching for calves in the snow, crossing unpredictable rivers on horseback, butting heads, getting injured or escaping injury, getting back on the horse.

I read a book recently by someone who lives his life in the city, and among other things he kept coming back to the idea that there were no real cowboys left (because, basically, modern-day cowboys have access to things like air conditioning). And I kept thinking about The Last Cows as I read that—kept thinking that that other writer had no concept of what it actually meant to be a cowboy, or do cowboy work; he had an image in his head, and any deviation from that image made him assess the real-life thing as less real.

One for readers of Claiming Ground and perhaps A Mile in Her Boots.

Thanks to the author and publisher for providing a review copy through NetGalley.