From England to Wyoming via Germany and New York. Yramiris Paul Tracy rebelled against traditional norms to forge the life she wanted to live—life on a ranch in the west. As she told her NYC lawyer in 1957, "My children will know the sky, the sunshine, the mountains, the prairie sage! My children will play on the back of a horse, not in a grimy alley."

Yry was not just a unique individual, she was elusive. And she was a study in contrasts: a romantic dreamer, yet hard-headed and tough as nails when confronted with obstacles that would have pulled others up short. Her flair for the dramatic, paired with a fear of intimacy and exposure, resulted in a wake of similar, but never-matching stories of her past. Her complex nature drew people to shake their heads in wonder and sometimes in disapproval, but to love her just the same.

This book is the author's attempt to unravel the enigma that was her mother and to share Yry's uniqueness beyond the scope of her friends and family.