The Personal History of Rachel DuPree Ann Weisgarber

The voice of the narrator – the books story teller, is perfect.  It is the mother of the family, and she is strong, she is smart, and she has the right emotions to take us through this historic narrative.

I have the distinct history of having been to the badlands for 50 straight years, last year was my first miss.  It is a distinct landscape that has to shape the person no matter how long you give it.  I have backpacked, spent weeks there, wandered its exotic landscape and explored.  But I have always felt that I want to return, but not to stay.  I cannot think of a landscape that would ask more of the settler, Indian, traveler.

The book captures the strength needed to survive in this land and adds the challenge of being an African American in 1900.  It also creates a strong image of the plight of the American Indian as the husband, an ex-cavalry man who had both fought and fathered them.  He felt a distinct resentment of the Indian, but the wife discovers the humanity of the Indian through the help that she receives from them as her husband works the mines and ranches and leaves her to deal with both their homestead and their five children.

Tragedies are personal.  Each person was exhausted by life and the challenges of each day – the loss of their only milk cow, the loss of a child, the threat of storms, the isolation of their lives in a landscape that has no sympathy. 

It is a well told story and the images are strong.

Audible.com synopsis.  Longlisted for the Orange Prize for Fiction, Ann Weisgarber's moving and majestic debut highlights one black family's struggle to survive the South Dakota Badlands. It's 1917 - 14 years after Rachel and Isaac Dupree came to this unforgiving land - and Isaac is proud of his landed independence. But rain stops falling, cattle are dying, and supplies are gone. Desperate and exhausted, Rachel determines to do what's right for her children, herself, and her husband.