Rural Sociology - United States, Western United States - Travel Essays & Descriptions, South Dakota - State & Local History, Natural History - General & Miscellaneous, Regional Studies - Midwest U.S., Natural Literature & History, Women's Biography - Gene

The Prairie in Her Eyes

Name: The Prairie in Her Eyes
Author: Ann Daum
ISBN: 9781571312556

by Ann Daum

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Overview

Reared on her father’s 13,000-acre spread, Ann Daum is now a rancher herself, raising sport horses and hoping to sustain a relationship to place in which self-reliance is not intertwined with cruelty, and closeness to the land does not imply hatred of the wild. Daum’s essays rise and fall with the undulations of the prairie and can be as forceful as the South Dakota weather. Her warm memories of being a little girl on the ranch and listening to her father tell stories contrast sharply with her recollections of the captive coyote she set free one night and the ranch hand whose casual brutality extended from the killing of wild creatures to sexual predation. Daum writes not only about the artifacts buried in the prairie soil but also about what lies hidden in the lives of the prairie’s residents.

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Library Journal

This collection of essays examines the life of a female rancher in the windy White River valley near Oakton, SD. Daum, who has taken over management of the remaining family land, subtly parallels her trials as a rancher with her father's fight to recover from complications from heart surgery. She chronicles the unfortunate national trend toward the demise of traditional ranching owing to financial strain, along with the struggles of her father, who now does not always recognize her. Readers come to know Daum as the daughter who left the ranch to attend college but then returned to her family home to stay. She explains her life on the ranch through her childhood experiences and present-day responsibilities, always with a hopeful eye to the April skies to watch for the return of the sandhill cranes. Both Daum and her father are grounded in the beauty of the natural world despite their personal struggles. For regional public libraries. Joyce Sparrow, Juvenile Welfare Board Lib., Pinellas Park, FL Copyright 2001 Cahners Business Information.