North Dakota Books

This book describes in detail 57 of North Dakota's historic sites. Forts, Indian villages, and natural areas are included; each site is well illustrated with historic and/or contemporary photos, and all locations show a map, making finding them easy. The information given is pertinent and interesting. Anyone planning on traveling in North Dakota to visit any of its historic sites would find it wise to bring this handsome book along.

I am a great-granddaughter of Lorenz Gustin and am so sorry I didn't purchase this book when I had the chance. It is a great history of how hopeful immigrants from Russia formed a variety of communities within the plains of North Dakota. I am hoping to purchase this book if it ever comes up for sale.

My 8 year old daughter was wide-eyed as she followed these two American Indian brothers on their quest to seek out the monstrous Uncegila. Jill Rubalcaba's language is rhythmic and poetic, and children will enjoy the starkly colorful paintings. A good choice for read-aloud

Book Review of Waiting for Coyote's Call:
An Eco-memoir from the Missouri River Bluff by Jerry Wilson
(South Dakota State Historical Society Press, 2008)

In A Sand County Almanac, Aldo Leopold wrote: "Every farm woodland, in addition to yielding lumber, fuel, and posts, should provide its owner a liberal education. This crop of wisdom never fails, but it is not always harvested." Leopold's analogy urges us to harvest the crop of information provided by the specific ecosystem in which we live. Most of us fail miserably at this harvest, and perhaps that explains why humans are the most invasive species on Earth.

Fortunately for us, Jerry Wilson heard Leopold's admonitions and spent 25 years harvesting this wisdom by daily recording the facts and observations of his bluff habitat in his journal. Now we the readers of this memoir can feast at the banquet that Jerry offers us from his laborious harvest. He serves a multicourse feast (20 chapters) that rivals those offered by his naturalist mentors (Leopold, Thoreau, Annie Dillard, Wendell Berry, Candace Savage, and many others). The banquet includes vivid descriptions of wildlife, detailed documentation of plant life, lively stories from his early farm life, and a verbal movie of his family's ongoing experiment of life on the Missouri bluffs. My favorite course is the chapter in which Jerry details the laborious but inspiring years of successfully restoring prairie on 30 acres. Paradoxically, the chapter on the darkness and befriending the night was most enlightening! In short, all readers, especially Midwestern naturalists and Sierra members, should enjoy many, if not all, the courses in the feast of local knowledge and wisdom served in this book.

The book is divided into five parts with each part containing four chapters. The first part, "Rehomesteading the Prairie," covers their purchase a bluff site and construction of a solar home using their own skills and labor. In the second part, "Into the Woods," Wilson relates many "long-treasured images of youth," (such as climbing trees and exploring forests, learning about water in streams and rivers, and probing how to let "darkness become my friend") to his beliefs and practices.

In part three, entitled "All My Relatives," Wilson uses extensive research to document the many human incursions into eastern South Dakota prior to 1858, and to tell engaging stories of past owners of the land since 1858. He ends part three with two informative chapters on the birds and wildlife along the bluff. Part four covers the many tasks of living in a "Prairie Home"---log splitting, removing rocks, gardening and raising food, to mention only a few---to show the concrete means used to achieve their goal of living more sustainably. Part five, entitled, "The Bluff and Beyond," contains four chapters that follow the traditions of Leopold and Thoreau of critiquing destructive, modern practices, such as mono crop farming and surface mining in the Black Hills. The book's final chapter, "A Year on the Bluff," takes the reader through one year of the unique, month-by-month changes in bluff ecosystems that simultaneously point to broad circular and continuous patterns in nature.

Interspersing quotes from Leopold, Thoreau, Annie Dillard, Wendell Berry, Candace Savage, and many others, Wilson reveals a caretaker's concern for nature's diverse beauty ("Taking care is our highest calling.") Though his memoir describes one family's specific experiences, it contains universal appeal to all who seek a sustainable land ethic. To sustain nature, one must understand nature's ways---at least enough to allow nature to pursue its own biotic complexity. This book delves into nature's complex diversity while inviting all readers to imagine and feel its wondrous mysteries still unknown.

We know that nature unleashed becomes nature diversified. Wilson's goal is to unleash nature and document its growing diversity. He knows that any attempt to describe the complex web of life is a mere snapshot in time, and he often uses the brevity of poetic vividness to add sharpness to his snapshots. But this is not a book of poetry, and he uses mostly a lively prose style to create dynamic verbal images that make his memoir flow like a movie. (A series of color photos in the middle of the book also add the touch of local flavor to his memoir.)

Wilson models the life path of land stewardship that both diminishes invasive footsteps, and labors strenuously to restore nature's complex diversity. He encourages us to stop, listen and learn as we activate all our senses. He asks us to expand the quantity and quality of our own harvest of nature's wisdom. Like Leopold, he warns that without both the information to know when to remain passive and when to bring our senses to high alert, we destroy nature's invisible and interconnected webs.

I greatly enjoyed reading this memoir and profited richly from its intricate details, insightful quotes, stirring memories, critical observations, engaging humor, and lively stories. It is more than a memoir compiled from 25 years of daily journal entries; it is a coherent ethic for sustainable living through ongoing learning and inherent appreciation of nature's feast of wisdom.
By, Dean Spader, Living River Group, Sierra Club

Book review by Richard Kisling, editor, California District Council Report, Number 20, Fall, 2001, page 9

Originally published in Frankfurt in 1993, Georg Hildebrandt's Wieso lebst du noch? ein Deutscher im Gulag is the book about the German Russians most widely read by the German public. Since August of this year, it has been available in this new English translation.

Mr. Hildebrandt turned 90 in July, 2001, and from the birthday tribute to him printed in the July issue of Volk auf dem Weg ("Georg Hildebrandt Survived Hell"), we can gain some sense of his life experience. He was born in 1911 in Kondratyevka, Don Region, into a well-off Mennonite family. After completing junior high school, he worked on his parents' farm, until 1929 when they were dispossessed during collectivization and banished. Between 1937 and 1945, twenty-five of his family members fell victim to Stalin's terrors, among them his father Isaac and his brother Heinrich. He found himself either in prison or in exile between 1930 and 1953: in Ukraine, in the Urals, in Siberia, and even in the Far East/Pacific region. In addition, he survived a series of 17 forced labor camps, including Kolyma and Magadan. In 1953 he was admitted to a tuberculosis hospital, having contracted the highly communicable disease in one of the prisons, and in 1955 he underwent lung surgery. In 1961 he moved to Alma-Ata, where he worked until he retired in 1971. He emigrated with his family to the Federal Republic of Germany in 1974.

The NDSU Library web page says: "He documents what happened with an amazing memory and precision. His biography is a shocking document of the Germans in the former USSR. Dr. Erich Franz Sommer writes in the preface: 'Testimonies were only rarely given by German camp inmates; more rarely yet, by those German colonists who themselves experienced forced collectivization and who have survived decades of resettlement in Siberia and Central Asia. That is why this biography and the report of suffering by the Ukrainian-German, George Hildebrandt, are of documentary value. He speaks not only for himself, he speaks also vicariously for those whose cries and prayers in prisons and in detention camps fell silent without finding an ear.'"

The title, "Why are you still alive?" was the cynical question once posed to Hildebrandt by a KGB officer. And, indeed, it is a miracle he survived to write this compelling account of his experience. The review of this book on the NDSU Libraries web page ends with this quote from the Frankfurter Allgemeine newspaper: "Imaginative, sympathetic readers should have strong nerves for this book. Hildebrandt's book is for everyone."

This beautiful work reminds me of one of my favorite books of all time, The Spirit Catches You and You Fall Down. Like Anne Fadiman, Eileen Pollack has an amazing sense of structure and of the important, risky, daring questions to ask. She confronts what others might shy away from, and she makes sense of it all for us. I loved learning about the brave and almost-forgotten Catherine Weldon.

Some of the key questions raised for me by this book are: what does it mean to be an insider, or an outsider, in a particular group or in a country? Does the outsider have any possibility of understanding/aiding/participating in another culture? How do we help or harm each other? Which tragedies are preventable, and which inevitable, and why? Pollack seems to show the same courage and dedication as her subject -- Sitting Bull's great-great-granddaughter invited her to participate in ceremonies not usually open to outsiders. Her trust is well repaid by this remarkable book.

I bought this as a birthday gift for my stepmom after seeing it in a literary catalog, Amazon had it cheaper of course. She is from South Dakota and I had an idea she might like the book, but she LOVED it. She said she clocked in 20 minutes late from her lunch break on the day I gave it to her, because she couldn't put it down. I later learned that she lived in the country and had lots of homes, wells, etc. that were WPA projects. A home run gift on this one, too bad they are not all this easy.

This well-written book provides an interesting character analysis of an immigrant doing his best to create a better life for himself and his family as most immigrants do, but it also portrays the efforts that he quietly undertook to mitigate Nazi policies leading up to and during WWII. Undoubtedly many people in the US and Canada made a similar impact; the story of this kind gentleman's actions in saving many relatives and others is enlightening in its illustration of individual efforts that some people independently undertook in the face of such an unusual and astonishing human event. The support he did and did not receive is also eye-opening.
A good choice for anyone who wants a better understanding of human nature.

It is some time since I have read _Master Butchers_, so forgive the fuzziness of memory, with the events perhaps confused, perhaps enlarged in significance or perhaps simply lost. I couldn't even finish the book. I loved reading it, but I simply became too worried when, with under 20 pages to go, *major* events were still unfolding. I wasn't sure I could take whatever denouement Erdrich had in store!

The major characters in _Master Butchers_ come from very different backgrounds and approach their lives' trials with different aims, strengths, and failings. Often their interactions with each other are monstrously hard to parse, for they have obviously different significances to each participant. Several main characters are never close to fully defined. The reader observes almost as if a minor character, less "inside the heads" of the movers and shakers of the tale.

For my part, I was taken in by Erdrich's storytelling several books previously, yet _Master Butchers_ marks perhaps the first time I fell in love almost immediately with a character of hers, wishing both to shelter under his strength and personally to will his success. I knew enough of Erdrich to know that a great character comes with no guarantee of longevity or ultimate likability. I'll admit to getting lucky in those respects with Fidelis: other characters with a similar immediate impact become only farther from focus over the course of the story.

It's not a very linear story, by the way. There are many different strands that twine and then separate again. It's almost like what one sees of another's life.

This was one of my book club's selections this year and it was an excellent choice. The author pulls you in right away into the lives of these interesting characters. The storylines moved along at just the right pace and having some of the twists and turns made for even better reading. One caveat - I had to skip a few paragraphs when it came to the killing of animals - but the rest of the book was a great read.

The Master Butcher's Singing Club resonates well with both the time and the place where it occurs. Erdrich presents characters that leap from the page and give you clear, direct contact with their personalities from the beginning. She presents an amazing picture of her own deep roots from the immigrant side of the family--a small stretch from her other work that has been more directly connected to the Native American culture. Clear, lyrical prose begins and carries through the entire novel bringing the conclusion to a remarkable heritage.

A friend loaned this to me, praising it to the heavens. So I felt obliged to finish it. Terrible! I cannot believe ths writer has the reputation she has...I think I read Love Medicine years ago in college, but frankly don't remember it. The characters are ill developed. Plotlines fizzle. The narrative is so indirect and oblique that some plot points are ridiculouly hard to follow. A complete waste of time...

Rich character development, remarkable story line and I didn't want to put it down. This will appeal to readers of popular novels, yet it's literary quality is well above that of standard pulp novels. The plot is unlike anything I've ever read. So refreshing to pick up something that takes me on an untrodden path!