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Summary: Praise for Prairie in Her Eyes
Review: Every now and then, an authentic voice sings a song about life, the world we live in, and the human condition. In Ann Daum's book "Prairie in Her Eyes," we hear all this, plus a symphony about the animal condition as well. I grew up in New York City. When I read Ann Daum's work, I am transported to a different world, made up of enormous skies, animal bodies and breath, and the rhythm of the seasons in big sky country. I am close to her and her world. I cry about a fox I never met. I breathe deeply about the fate of cows, prairie dogs and horses. Life takes on a new perspective and a depth that flows from the earth, the weather, the ranch, and Ann's generous and sensitive heart. Fine writing should reach out to whatever is univeral, but also speak to one human being's particular experience. "The Prairie In Her Eyes" has achieved this essential interweave, and I recommend it to anyone with heart or soul or mind.
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Summary: Proud to be a Dakotan
Review: From her descriptions of the wind, to the grasses, to the hardships, Ann Daum captured South Dakota's reality on paper. Every chapter lends truths to the prairie and our lives here. Thanks, Ann.
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Summary: SOUL-FULL
Review: If you want to taste earth and the vast, wind-carried longings,this book will be a soulful treat, page after page. Ann weaves image and story together with our almost forgotten human need for something more primal, more true, than our bleak and urban skies.
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Summary: Praise for Prairie in Her Eyes
Review: Minneapolis Star-Tribune Regional Round-up, June 24, 2001: "Daum's writing is lyrical, haunted by mortality, and so detailed you can almost feel the dust and heat. With great feeling, she captures a place where 'loneliness is just another disease.'"Forward Magazine, July Issue: "This land, the prairie is not just in her eyes-it's in her soul in this slender but weighty first book."
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Summary: This could have been my life
Review: My life has many parallels to Ann Daum's; my life could have been hers. I grew up on a farm/ranch in central North Dakota, went out of state for college, came home to try to make a living, enjoy traveling and the wonders of the rest of the world, but am always drawn back to the northern Great Plains. Nowhere is the phrase "Hope springs eternal" better personified than in the lives of farmers and ranchers on the northern Great Plains. Daum captures this. Despite devastating losses of livestock, hail storms, floods and grasshopper plagues, farmers and ranchers believe next spring will be better, there might be a bumper crop and the next winter can't be so harsh. This hope strains marriages, finances and families. Daum also wonderfully and painfully captures the contradictions between the love of pets and baby calves and the war against predators and ultimate demise of all farm animals. I, fortunately, did not have some of the negative experiences that Daum did, but I saw them in others, heard of them and empathize. Walt Whitman wrote, "The Plains, while less stunning at first sight, last longer, fill the esthetic sense fuller, precede all the rest and make North America's characteristic landscape." Daum supports this statement. Anybody who enjoyed this book might want to read "Dakota: A Spiritual Geography," by Kathleen Norris. Also, for a different, more fact based, perspective of the Great Plains, "Where The Buffalo Roam: The Storm Over the Revolutionary Plan to Restore America's Great Plains," by Anne Matthews.
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