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Ebook264 pages4 hours
Prairie Silence: A Memoir
Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
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About this ebook
A rural expatriate’s struggle to reconcile family, home, love, and faith with the silence of the prairie land and its people
Melanie Hoffert longs for her North Dakota childhood home, with its grain trucks and empty main streets. A land where she imagines standing at the bottom of the ancient lake that preceded the prairie: crop rows become the patterned sand ripples of the lake floor; trees are the large alien plants reaching for the light; and the sky is the water’s vast surface, reflecting the sun. Like most rural kids, she followed the out-migration pattern to a better life. The prairie is a hard place to stay—particularly if you are gay, and your home state is the last to know.
For Hoffert, returning home has not been easy. When the farmers ask if she’s found a “fella,” rather than explain that—actually—she dates women, she stops breathing and changes the subject. Meanwhile, as time passes, her hometown continues to lose more buildings to decay, growing to resemble the mouth of an old woman missing teeth. This loss prompts Hoffert to take a break from the city and spend a harvest season at her family’s farm. While home, working alongside her dad in the shop and listening to her mom warn, “Honey, you do not want to be a farmer,” Hoffert meets the people of the prairie. Her stories about returning home and exploring abandoned towns are woven into a coming-of-age tale about falling in love, making peace with faith, and belonging to a place where neighbors are as close as blood but are often unable to share their deepest truths.
In this evocative memoir, Hoffert offers a deeply personal and poignant meditation on land and community, taking readers on a journey of self-acceptance and reconciliation.
Melanie Hoffert longs for her North Dakota childhood home, with its grain trucks and empty main streets. A land where she imagines standing at the bottom of the ancient lake that preceded the prairie: crop rows become the patterned sand ripples of the lake floor; trees are the large alien plants reaching for the light; and the sky is the water’s vast surface, reflecting the sun. Like most rural kids, she followed the out-migration pattern to a better life. The prairie is a hard place to stay—particularly if you are gay, and your home state is the last to know.
For Hoffert, returning home has not been easy. When the farmers ask if she’s found a “fella,” rather than explain that—actually—she dates women, she stops breathing and changes the subject. Meanwhile, as time passes, her hometown continues to lose more buildings to decay, growing to resemble the mouth of an old woman missing teeth. This loss prompts Hoffert to take a break from the city and spend a harvest season at her family’s farm. While home, working alongside her dad in the shop and listening to her mom warn, “Honey, you do not want to be a farmer,” Hoffert meets the people of the prairie. Her stories about returning home and exploring abandoned towns are woven into a coming-of-age tale about falling in love, making peace with faith, and belonging to a place where neighbors are as close as blood but are often unable to share their deepest truths.
In this evocative memoir, Hoffert offers a deeply personal and poignant meditation on land and community, taking readers on a journey of self-acceptance and reconciliation.
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Reviews for Prairie Silence
Rating: 4.000000055555556 out of 5 stars
4/5
18 ratings2 reviews
- Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Lush description, as a city person was captivated by the details of a much different environment, crisp story-telling
- Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5While Melanie Hoffert was quick to leave her North Dakota home when she got the chance, she has always felt a longing for everything that said home represents. There's a dissonance between the comforting aspects of home and family and the silence that it imposes on those who may not fit the expectations of their community. But Melanie is determined to explore this disconnect and try to reconcile these aspects of her life and self, planning to spend a harvest at home helping on the farm. Her journey is one of self-discovery, learning things about her friends and family she hadn't noticed before, and understanding what it means to call the prairie home, even if it's not where you will live out your days.
This book resonated for me on so very many levels. For starters, Melanie's family farm is about 30 miles from where I grew up. The places (and even some of the people) she mentions in this book are extremely familiar to me. The sense of community, the descriptions of life growing up where she did--are all things from which I can draw some very direct parallels. I'm also someone who left North Dakota when I finished college, taking the first chance I could get to be somewhere else. I did end up going back for a few years, but have since moved on again. And many of the same reasons and beliefs and worries that Melanie shares in her book are things I've felt.
But beyond all that, what the author has done here is construct an incredible narrative that I think will resonate with anyone who has ever left home and spent time trying to reconcile what it means to leave home behind. I also think even those who stayed where they grew up can find moments in this book that speak to them, as the author examines how we all find our place in our community and the reasons people choose to stay. And, of course, anyone who has ever felt like they're a bit of an outsider in their family or who has ever felt like they couldn't be completely open with those who are closest to them will identify with Melanie's journey and join her in the revelations that she makes as she finishes her harvest retreat and decides to return to the city.
This book was the winner of the Minnesota Book Award for Memoir & Creative Nonfiction in 2014, and it's clear why. Not only is the story raw and moving, but the writing is compelling, engaging, and descriptive. This is definitely an author I plan to watch for in the future...