Debra K. Marquart

A wry memoir about a family farm, a father, and a daughter, and why it's so hard to go home again. Debra Marquart grew up on a family 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. In this distinctive memoir, she chronicles this process of flight and...

Debra Marquart s newest memoir, an assemblage of essays, explores the space between states of exile and belonging, the seemingly irresolvable dilemma of the restless homebody. Marquart was born into a family of land-loving people -- farmers known as the ethnic group Germans-from-Russia -- who had emigrated from Russia to the United States between 1886 and 1911 and taken up land claims in Dakota Territory. Her grandparents tended their farms and fields,...