Book summaryNorris writes about the dynamics of small-town life in this tribute to the Great Plains and their power to inform the human spirit. Filled with descriptions of a harsh and desolate, yet sublime landscape, "Dakota" weaves together the lives of farmers, townsfolk, Native Americans, and a community of Benedictine monks. Media reviews"[A] remarkable new work of nonfiction...a deeply spiritual, deeply moving book...It is an act of devotion with nothing cloistered about it, an endlessly instructive book." |
Dakota: A Spiritual Geographyby Norris, Kathleen
Book description: Houghton Mifflin, September, 1993. Trade Paperback. Good. No spine creases, shelf wear & long bend on cover. Aging pages, name on endpage, no marks in text. Amazon: After 20 years of living in the ""Great American Outback,"" as Newsweek magazine once designated the Dakotas, poet Kathleen Norris (The Cloister Walk) came to understand the fascinating ways that people become metaphors for the land they inhabit. When trying to understand the polarizing contradictions that exist in the Dakotas between ""hospitality and insularity, change and inertia, stability and instability.... between hope and despair, between open hearts and closed minds,"" Norris draws a map. ""We are at the point of transition between east and west in the United States,"" she explains, ""geographically and psychically isolated from either coast, and unlike either the Midwest or the desert west.""\n\nLike Terry Tempest Williams (Refuge), Norris understands how the boundary between inner and outer scenery begins to blur when one is fully present in the landscape of their lives. As a result, she offers the geography lesson we all longed for in school. This is a poetic, noble, and often funny (see her discussion on the foreign concept of tofu) tribute to Dakota, including its Native Americans, Benedictine monks, ministers and churchgoers, wind-weathered farmers, and all its plain folks who live such complicated and simple lives. --Gail Hudson From Publishers Weekly: A native of South Dakota, Norris maps the cultural and spiritual landscape of life on the High Plains. Copyright 1994 Reed Business Information, Inc. ISBN: 039571091X.
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