Heartland

This book takes on class, gender, and addiction, plus a host of other contemporary issues facing rural America and the nation—and Smarsh still manages to craft a compelling, human memoir.

This book might be the antidote to all the easy, anodyne, partisan conclusions the talking heads offer about rural America. As someone who grew up in rural America but now lives in a small city on the West Coast, I felt challenged reading this memoir.

Smarsh is the best kind of rabble-rouser; she’s telling it straight no matter who is listening. 

This is a book I think should be required reading as it delves into Sarah Smarsh’s upbringing in rural Kansas and her experiences breaking her family’s cycle of poverty. As a memoir, we get a deep look at Smarsh’s life, spanning multiple generations of financial, physical, and mental struggles.

I identified so much with this book and appreciated that Smarsh bares so much of herself in order to get readers to understand the challenges that rural communities are going through. She is truly a fierce female, and I want everyone to read this memoir!

This memoir deals with the present reality and future likely realities of being a poor person in rural, “fly-over” America.

Smarsh details her upbringing in Kansas while describing the people who influenced her. This is a well-written, educational book I — as someone who grew up in rural Kentucky — easily connected with and thoroughly enjoyed.  

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.… show more.