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Sto caricando le informazioni... Prairie Reuniondi Barbara J. Scot
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"Part memoir, part social and cultural history, part ecological exploration, Prairie Reunion takes writer Barbara Scot to Scotch Grove, Iowa, the small farming community of her childhood where she succeeds in coming to terms with her parents' legacy, a bittersweet history that involves love, abandonment, and suicide." "In 1943, Scot's mother, a young Iowa farm wife, was deserted by her husband. He left behind two small children and a mountain of debts. Through the poetry of Scot's description, the prairie setting in which her parents' tragedy unfolded provides a majestic backdrop for a journey through family, place, and time. With exquisite tenderness and insight, Scot relives her childhood. She re-evaluates her parents' lives in the light of her own experience, and in light of the community's religious and social history, and in terms of the land itself. With modesty and grace, Prairie Reunion tells a universal story of age-old heartache and how that heartache can be assuaged and absorbed into a living present. It is a work of enormous power and resonance that will speak hauntingly to every daughter and son."--BOOK JACKET.Title Summary field provided by Blackwell North America, Inc. All Rights Reserved Non sono state trovate descrizioni di biblioteche |
Discussioni correntiNessunoCopertine popolari
 Google Books — Sto caricando le informazioni...GeneriSistema Decimale Melvil (DDC)977.763History and Geography North America Midwestern U.S. Iowa Central east counties JonesClassificazione LCVotoMedia: (3.43)
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Her ancestors were Scots Presbyterians who farmed in Iowa and the land was deeply important to them. Her mother was a teacher and was proud that she could buy herself a car. She married a local man who ran up debt, borrowed against the farm, and finally ran off with another woman when the author was a baby. To her deep shame, her mother lost the farm and a couple of years later learned that her (ex) husband had killed himself. She never remarried, and died in her 50s.
Scot had grown up and left for graduate school, and ended up in Oregon, but she also had an unhappy marriage with a man who abused her. When she took this trip she was in her 60s, had remarried, and had two adult kids. Her brother had descended into drugs and alcohol and they weren’t in touch. In Iowa she visited historical societies and read church records of trials for fornication, and Native American accounts of life before white people came. She visits caves where early people wintered and speaks to a Native American man at the Mesquakie settlement. He talks of how their problem has always been how much of the outside they let in and whether old ways will be lost but says “It’s like a fire. Even when the fire dies down there’s always that little heartbeat. … Our fire as died down before. As long as that little center is still red, all God has to do is to blow on our coals and the fire starts up again. In our traditional religion, we call it the ‘fire of our people.’”
There’s no big discovery or revelation, but she finds peace in the plains and rivers, memories, and family bonds.
My mother’s family was similar to hers - farmers in Ohio, Scots Presbyterian (so I recognize the hymns she quotes). But my grandfather was a younger son who wasn’t going to inherit the farm; he went to college and became an engineer. My grandmother lived in the town and her parents ran the store. They left for California in the 20s for the milder California climate. I never heard them say anything nostalgic about the farm. (