The Ogallala Road: A Story of Love, Family, and the Fight to Keep the Great Plains from Running Dry
| Author | : | |
| Rating | : | 4.83 (563 Votes) |
| Asin | : | 0143127071 |
| Format Type | : | paperback |
| Number of Pages | : | 288 Pages |
| Publish Date | : | 2014-12-22 |
| Language | : | English |
DESCRIPTION:
A graduate of the Iowa Writers’ Workshop and the Iowa Nonfiction Writing Program, her awards include a fellowship from the National Endowment for the Arts. JULENE BAIR also wrote One Degree West: Reflections of a Plainsdaughter. She lives in Longmont, Colorado.
Melanie I. Mulhall said The Call of Land, Water, and Love. I drove through Kansas the first time in 1986. I was moving from Illinois to Colorado, full of vigor and excitement. I could easily have fallen asleep at the wheel during the four-hundred-mile drive through Kansas. I found it that barren and devoid of interest. I wondered what kind of people lived in such a state. I made that trip again in "The Call of Land, Water, and Love" according to Melanie I. Mulhall. I drove through Kansas the first time in 1986. I was moving from Illinois to Colorado, full of vigor and excitement. I could easily have fallen asleep at the wheel during the four-hundred-mile drive through Kansas. I found it that barren and devoid of interest. I wondered what kind of people lived in such a state. I made that trip again in 2011, but this time, I didn't find Kansas to be quite so boring. I wasn't sure if I had changed or Kansas had, but I still wondered what kind of people lived in that state.Julene Bair has answered that question beautifull. 011, but this time, I didn't find Kansas to be quite so boring. I wasn't sure if I had changed or Kansas had, but I still wondered what kind of people lived in that state.Julene Bair has answered that question beautifull. Sometimes interesting, but needed more focus WestMetroMommy I have read, and enjoyed, a number of memoirs about farming and environmentalism. Because of that, I thought The Ogallala Road would be a book I would completely enjoy.To be fair, there were things I liked about this book. Bair has a beautiful style that well suits the landscape about which she writes. I was completely engrossed for about the first 3rd of the book, and then things started to fall apart for me.Up until that point, the book seemed to be a love story--a love story with the prairie and a love story with Ward, the rancher she meets on a visit ho. "Searching for water and grace" according to Story Circle Book Reviews. "I found the pond lying still and innocent, a receptive, vulnerable reflection of the sky. This wasn't rainwater. It hadn't rained in weeks. My brother Bruce had been managing our farm since our father died--four years ago now, in 1997. He told me he was worried that the ground would be too parched to plant dryland winter wheat this September. No. This pond was what the pioneers and early settlers had called live water. It had found the surface by itself without the aid of rain, or today, a rancher's pump. It came from the aquifer, exhaling into the bed of
Bair’s moving memoir, capturing her unfolding love affair and search for a new way to farm, powerfully updates the literature of the American West.. A single mother balancing multiple allegiances, she meets Ward, a rancher who she hopes will become her partner in seeking a path to save her legacy.The Ogallala Road eloquently interweaves pressing issues of environmental degradation with a deeply personal story of love and family. “A moving story of love and loss, denial and reckoning, and the emergence of a new kind of hope.” —Ruth OzekiWhen Julene Bair inherits part of a large farm on the High Plains of Kansas, she intends to honor her father’s commandment, “Hang on to your land!” But she learns some troubling facts about the ecological harm done by farms like hers, which depend on water pumped from the rapidly depleting Ogallala Aquifer
--Colleen Mondor . Book groups should find much to discuss here, from love to family to the big questions we all must face about how we live now. In the midst of the more prosaic tasks of land management, she recounts her long concernswith the demands farming places on the land, especially the Ogallala aquifer. From Booklist *Starred Review* In this thoughtful consideration of life at a crossroads, Bair tackles questions about single parenthood, romance, and the monumental task of determining the future of the family farm. Bair grew up steeped deeply in Kansas farming, but her life has taken her far away in more ways than one. A woman facing midlife alone with a teenage son, she finds herself falling into an unexpected love affair at the same time her father’s death forces changes to the family farm. Threaded throughout each chapter are her travels along the Ogallala’s path as she puzzles out the