The Horizontal World: Growing Up Wild In the Middle of Nowhere

by Debra Marquart

Overview

Debra Marquart grew up on a farm in rural North Dakota—on land her family had worked for generations. From the earliest age she knew she wanted out; surely life had more to offer than this unyielding daily grind, she thought. But she was never able to abandon it completely.



"[A] rich memoir, set in North Dakota, about growing up on and escaping from a family farm for a future that held once unheard–of opportunities as a rock musician, poet, and English teacher." —Chicago Sun–Times

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781582433639
Publisher:	Catapult
Publication date:	06/05/2007
Pages:	304
Sales rank:	621,768
Product dimensions:	7.96(w) x 10.88(h) x 0.83(d)

About the Author

Debra Marquart is a professor of English at Iowa State University. Her work has received numerous awards and commendations, including the John Guyon Nonfiction Award, the Mid-American Review Nonfiction Award, The Headwater's Prize, the Shelby Foote Prize for the Essay from the Faulkner Society, a Pushcart Prize, and a 2008 NEA Creative Writing Prose Fellowship among others. Marquart’s memoir, The Horizontal World: Growing up Wild in the Middle of Nowhere, received the "Elle Lettres" award from Elle magazine, a New York Times Editors’ Choice recommendation, and the 2007 PEN USA Creative Nonfiction Award. Marquart is also the author of two poetry collections—Everything's a Verb and From Sweetness—and a collection of interrelated short stories, The Hunger Bone: Rock & Roll Stories, which draws on her experiences as a female road musician.

Table of Contents

Prologue: Pilgrim Soul     xi
Things Not Seen in a Rearview Mirror     1
The Land Husband     27
The Most Famous Person from North Dakota     53
Prodigal Daughters     73
The Horizontal Life     97
On Lost and Crazy Sisters     119
Between Earth and Sky     137
Great Falls     159
To Kill a Deer     177
Failures of the Heart     205
Signs and Wonders     227
Epilogue: Sustainable Agriculture: The Farmer's Daughter Revisited     253
Acknowledgments     265
Works Cited     269
Reading Group Guide for The Horizontal World     271