I grew up in Minnesota, and although I have not lived there for most of my adult life, it will always be home for me. I miss the prairie, the lakes, and the wide open skies; I even miss the winters. So I love reading good books set in the Midwest. To me these five books exemplify all that is best about Midwesterners: their honesty, their modesty, their connection to the land; their belief in themselves, and in the interesting and good people in this part of the country. Each of these writers shows that sometimes you can go home again: and that it canbe worth it to do so.
I wrote...
A Long Way from Iowa: From the Heartland to the Heart of France
Shortly after my mother died, I discovered a fragment of my grandmother’s diary from 1931, when she was a young mother during the Depression. The writing was so vivid it made me want to learn more about this grandmother, with whom I had never been close. I suddenly realized that both she and my mother had a passion for reading and writing they had never been able to fulfill, and that they had passed that love on to me. With this book I wanted to pay tribute to their role in inspiring me to be a writer; I also wanted to tell their untold stories, and show how their love of literature helped me to live the writerly life I’ve been fortunate to live.
I love the very idea of a whole book devoted to poetic writing about the weather.
Weather in the Midwest tends to be particularly dramatic, and to have a particularly marked influence on daily life. Susan Allen Toth is a wonderful writer; with humor and insight, she leads the reader on a thought-provoking exploration of how weather affects our lives, our memories, and even our character.
Midwesterners love to talk about the weather, approaching the vagaries and challenges of extreme temperatures, deep snow, and oppressive humidity with good-natured complaining, peculiar pride, and communal spirit. Such a temperamental climate can at once terrify and disturb, yet offer unparalleled solace and peace.Leaning into the Wind is a series of ten intimate essays in which Susan Allen Toth, who has spent most of her life in Iowa, Minnesota, and Wisconsin, reveals the ways in which weather has challenged and changed her perceptions about herself and the world around her. She describes her ever-growing awareness of and appreciation for how…
Cheri Register grew up in Albert Lea, Minnesota in the 1950s and 60s, in a working-class home.
When she was 14, a strike in a meatpacking plant created deep divisions within the town and brought national attention when the National Guard was called out to maintain order. As a teenager Register felt acutely the social tensions and class conflicts inherent in such a situation.
In this book she elegantly weaves together her personal coming-of-age story and her own family’s history with details of the strike gathered from archives as well as conversations with those who lived through it.
With sensitivity, humor, affection, and respect for the people of her hometown Register has written a classic American story with a focus on class issues that remain to be resolved.
A unique blend of memoir and public history, Packinghouse Daughter, winner of the Minnesota Book Award, tells a compelling story of small-town, working-class life. The daughter of a Wilson & Company millwright, Cheri Register recalls the 1959 meatpackers' strike that divided her hometown of Albert Lea, Minnesota. The violence that erupted when the company "replaced" its union workers with strikebreakers tested family loyalty and community stability. Register skillfully interweaves her own memories, historical research, and oral interviews into a narrative that is thoughtful and impassioned about the value of blue-collar work and the dignity of those who do it.
I love this book for its honesty, depth, intelligence—and heart—as well as for the beauty of the prose.
Sarah Smarsh details the story of several generations of her family and their struggles to overcome the difficulties presented by teenage motherhood. Determined not to continue this pattern, she creates a successful life for herself as a professor and journalist.
While her story is very specific to her family, it is also one that echoes the lives of millions of hard-working Americans who struggle to overcome the obstacles to achieving stability and dignity in their lives no matter how hard they work.
Serious, at times heartbreaking, there are also many moments of poetry and joy as Smarsh brings her family, and the beauty of rural Kansas, to life.
*Finalist for the National Book Award* *Finalist for the Kirkus Prize* *Instant New York Times Bestseller* *Named a Best Book of the Year by NPR, New York Post, BuzzFeed, Shelf Awareness, Bustle, and Publishers Weekly*
An essential read for our times: an eye-opening memoir of working-class poverty in America that will deepen our understanding of the ways in which class shapes our country and “a deeply humane memoir that crackles with clarifying insight”.*
Sarah Smarsh was born a fifth generation Kansas wheat farmer on her paternal side, and the product of generations of teen mothers on her maternal side. Through…
Ian Frazier’s exploration of his own family’s history takes the reader on a fascinating deep (and broad) dive into American history.
What begins as a chance discovery of letters written between his parents as a young couple leads him inexorably back into the far-reaching branches of his family tree, and a unique perspective on American life from the eighteenth century to the twentieth.
David McCullough called this book a ”remarkable history of an unremarkable family.” The author’s keen curiosity, masterful storytelling, and elegant prose kept me spellbound. I read this book when it first came out, and it was one of those books that for a while I couldn’t stop telling everyone to read.
I’ve never forgotten it, and now I think I’m about to read it again.
Family tells the story of Ian Frazier's family in America from the early colonial days to the present. Using letters and other family documents, he reconstructs two hundred years of middle class life, visiting small towns his ancestors lived in, reading books they read, and discovering the larger forces of history that affected them.
In this collection of essays, Bill Holm honors the history, the heritage, the people, and the land surrounding his hometown of Mineota, Minnesota. After extensive travels and life in other places, he ends up back in a town that he never wanted to return to; but having landed there, he finds his way to an appreciation of that place and its people.
In this book he pays tribute to the depth and richness that can be found—given the right attitude—anywhere on earth, including in a small town on the prairie.
Growing up, Bill Holm knew what failure was: “to die in Minneota.” But after returning to his hometown (“a very small dot on an ocean of grass”) after 20 years’ absence, he wasn’t so sure.
Finding pleasure in the customs and characters of small-town life, in The Heart Can Be Filled Anywhere on Earth he writes with affection about the town elders, seen by those in the outside world as misfits and losers.
“They taught me what to value, what to ignore, what to embrace, and what to resist.”
In his trek through the heartland, Holm covers a satisfyingly wide…
Neuroscience PhD student Frankie Conner has finally gotten her life together—she’s determined to discover the cause of her depression and find a cure for herself and everyone like her. But the first day of her program, she meets a group of talking animals who have an urgent message they refuse to share. And while the animals may not have Frankie’s exalted human brain, they know things she doesn’t, like what happened before she was adopted.
To prove she’s sane, Frankie investigates her forgotten past and conducts clandestine experiments. But just when she uncovers the truth, she has to make an impossible choice: betray the animals she’s fallen in love with—or give up her last chance at success and everything she thought she knew.
Frankie Conner, first-year graduate student at UC Berkeley, is finally getting her life together. After multiple failures and several false starts, she's found her calling: become a neuroscientist, discover the cause of her depression and anxiety, and hopefully find a cure for herself and everyone like her.
But her first day of the program, Frankie meets a mysterious group of talking animals who claim to have an urgent message for her. The problem is, they're not willing to share it. Not yet. Not until she's ready.
While Frankie's new friends may not have her highly evolved, state-of-the-art, exalted human brain,…
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