One woman's land

Thesis (M.F.A.) University of Alaska Fairbanks, 2001'One woman's land' is an essay collection that explores how place shapes identity and reciprocally how such marked individuals influence their land, family, and community. The essays are memoir and use the author's family farm in northwestern North Dakota as a vehicle to illuminate the dynamics of farming families and their rural communities when the work on which both survive is at once inclusive and a way of life. Each essay remains separate in narrative and structure, but the themes addressed are recursive and reflect upon other sections. The essays remain linked in that they create a social history that seeks to define a rural lifestyle holding an increasingly fragile existence in American identity.Drift factors -- The bloated bull -- Runaway horses -- Daughter, plant trees -- Homecomings -- Silent springs -- The starting five -- Grandmother's rules -- Of cows and me