The Horizontal World: Growing Up in the Middle of Nowhere: A Memoir - Hardcover

Marquart, Debra

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 1582433453 ISBN 13: 9781582433455

Publisher: Counterpoint, 2006

Synopsis

An evocative memoir of growing up on a family farm in rural North Dakota, on land her family had worked for generations, reflects on her desire to escape the difficult life, her relationship with and admiration for her father, and the influence of place on personal identity.

About this title

About the Author:

An associate professor of English, Debra Marquart is the coordinator of the Creative Writing Program at Iowa State University. She is the author of The Hunger Bone: Rock & Roll Stories, and the poetry collections Everything's a Verb and From Sweetness. Marquart's essays have three times been cited as Notable Essays in Best American Essays, and she has been awarded the Shelby Foote Nonfiction Prize (Faulkner Society), the Writer's Digest Nonfiction Award, and a Pushcart Prize, among other commendations. She lives in Ames, Iowa.

From Booklist:

Marquart has an interesting bio: she's a North Dakota farm girl, former rock-and-roll band member, college dropout, professor, and Pushcart Prize-winning writer. Born into a dairy-farm family, like many young people she flees as soon as she is able, taking with her the experiences that have determined the line of her backbone. She carries the spark of her -Russian-born immigrant grandfather, who created a hard yet rewarding life for his family in harsh and arid North Dakota, and senses that her wildness is a trait inherited from her creative, slightly off-balance great aunt. Marquart writes sweetly and wistfully of her ties to the past, which both tangle her up and serve as a safety net. She isn't hit with any blinding revelations while contemplating herself in the mirror of her life but rather acquires a deeper appreciation for where she's been and where she's landed. Readers will particularly relate to her musings about her father's death as she explores her coming-of-midlife discoveries. Pamela Crossland
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About this edition

• Publisher: Counterpoint
• Publication date: 2006
• ISBN 10: 1582433453
• ISBN 13: 9781582433455
• Binding: Hardcover
• Number of pages: 304