| BOOK | The Ogallala Road: A Memoir of Love and Reckoning |
| By | |
| ISBN | 0670786047 |
| ISBN-13 | 9780670786046 |
| Publication | 17 April 2025 |
| Number of Pages | 288 |
| Format Type | Hardcover |
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Literature Fiction I won this book on a First Read Giveaway on Goodreads and was thrilled to get the advance copy I was really not sure how much I would like to read a book about farming but let me tell you this author drew me into her world and I thorougly enjoyed her memoir The bonus was the author s ties to my current state of residence in Iowa. The ogallala road ebook read online I knew nothing about the Ogallala area and the entire aquifer system and I became very interested in the entire struggle that the author had with managing the land while being true to the environment The book reads as a journal of sorts with just enough detail to keep the reader interested in the personal parts of the author s life her loves.
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The Ogallala Road A Memoir of Love and Reckoning is the first First Reads book I have ever won Julene Bair shares her love and worry about the Ogallala Aquifer in eloquently written prose The title of the book really has a double meaning One meaning is specifically about the importance of creating some sort of conservation effort around the Ogallala Aquifer and other precious water sources of the world The other is how the Ogallala seems to interweave deeply with Julene s life The aquifer has deep ties with her family s livelihood opens her to love again in later life and calls to her as she ventures to the Mojave Desert and Laramie WY This is Julene s song to the aquifer that she shares for all who would want to hear I would recommend this book to anyone who has a love of nature or has been touched by nature in some way It was a pleasure reading Julene s life story Since I received an advance uncorrected proof I am hopeful that the official release in March 2014 will include an index recommended book list or additional resource information for those that wish to join in on some of the activist efforts Julene mentions in her book Nonfiction Literature Fiction A delicious weave of love story land story farming past and present sodbusters vs cowboys and under it all the vast aquifer that permits crazy corn growing on the high plains A deft blend of scene and exposition a rich narrative arc and many issues to ponder Nonfiction Literature Fiction I had a growing sense as I read this book was that it was a very important story It s a personal tale told quietly and with a gentle voice The details are deceptively simple Kansas farm girl leaves home finds and loses love has a son later finds love again But those are the surface details of Julene Bair s life Bubbling underneath is a tough determined woman with the gumption to live alone in an off the grid rock hut in the Mojave Desert to raise a son on her own to operate huge farm machinery and labor outdoors on her parents farm from dawn until dusk Along with her story is the life of the Ogallala Aquifer the book s namesake an enormous subterranean body of water that is steadily being depleted by the farmers who take as much of it as their rights allow Julene Bair is the daughter of such a family and her story is one of a person who both loved her farming parents and their spread and at the same time recognized that what was happening to the aquifer was and is a tragedy The Ogallala Road is an engrossing story told by an accomplished writer Nonfiction Literature Fiction Rarely do story and conscience come together in a memoir so well as in Julene Bair s THE OGALLA ROAD A MEMOIR OF LOVE AND RECKONING From its hypnotic beginning in the feel of sun dirt and wheat stubble Bair draws us into the fully realized High Plains landscape of western Kansas where she was raised In search of springs she follows an unpredictable trail into her family s farming past It winds its way toward a love affair with a rancher reconfigured relationships with her family members and wholly new responsibilities to the land and its water The beauty of THE OGALLALA ROAD is in its finely tuned resonances between personal story and vital environmental issues With unsentimental honesty she bares her heart from her girlhood as a farmer s daughter and her young adulthood in San Francisco and the Mojave Desert through fraught relationships with men and the challenges of raising her son Jake as a single mother to her flinty but loving relationship with her father Falling in love with Ward promises to resolve her practical and romantic dilemmas As she says in one of the book s many brilliant lines I was thinking of my big reunification plan between Julene s divided selves Bair s strong authentic voice grounded in experience and well researched facts gives her the credibility to speak out on the use of water and the future of the Ogallala Aquifer Her address to the water district directors is a microcosm of national water politics speaking truth to power when truth can see all sides and even power is conflicted She never strays into polemic but resoundingly clarifies the relationships among water irrigation crops cows and food At the same time her emotional investment through home and family makes this story intensely readable and entertaining She writes of sex with freshness and grace as in I muttered something unspellable a cross between a moan and a sigh I especially liked the personal look into the domestic and agricultural life of farming families past and present Her characterization of her mother is at once forthright and tender a gem of intergenerational feminist insight Bair s directness is well served by her gorgeous images such as the sky as a clear strip of cellophane blue on the horizon and Ward s eyes as Kaleidoscopic as if filled with sunlit green stones THE OGALLALA ROAD elevates the memoir to eco narrative of the most compelling It calls to be read widely and thoughtfully and it will Nonfiction Literature Fiction I received an advanced reader copy of Julene Bair s The Ogallala Road A Memoir of Love and Reckoning as a first read thanks to Goodreads The Ogallala Road tells the story of the Bair family farm and its impact on the ever diminishing Ogallala aquifer As a born and raised Los Angeleno I wasn t expecting to enjoy a memoir about farm life and its ecological impact as much as I did Julene tells the story of the Bair family legacy that her father left behind one which fills her with constant internal turmoil She is torn between holding onto her father s prized and cherished land and doing right by the Ogallala aquifer the earth and herself Throughout the novel we learn not only of the Bair family farm but of Julene s family history love life and personal beliefs Julene touches upon varying aspects of her life yet The Ogallala Road remains incredibly cohesive throughout with Julene always bringing the focus back to her love of the land and the ties that will forever bind her to it Julene has an incredible love for the wild and this passion translates beautifully in her prose Eloquently written intriguing and overall an important read The Ogallala Road is a beautifully crafted story that resonates deeply with the untamed soul Nonfiction Literature Fiction Memoirs are not a genre that I normally read but this one called to me I ve lived much of my life in the Midwest and have read about the dust bowl years and the problems of drought Also I lived quite a few years in California and recently read of the problems there with the lowering of the water table because of lack of rain and snow It s even ironic that I enjoyed this book because I have lived mostly in big cities and am not an outdoor person in the least But reading of Julene s life growing up on a Kansas farm and then her love of living in the desert was fascinating Parts of this memoir reads like a novel because of the excellent writing by Julene Bair and also her life has some of the adventure that novels usually contain It isn t a completely rosy picture that is portrayed but there is some optimism for saving the Ogallala aquifer for future generations I ve noted about other issues that it takes a person with a zealous nature to persuade others Julene Bair is that person for the Ogallala Nonfiction her relationship with her son and her family I learned a lot and was thrilled to be able to read this advance copy Nonfiction Literature Fiction 3. The ogallala roadr roader 5 An unusual memoir about water conservation and romance found and lost brooding on the fault lines between farmland and wilderness The lyrical style and environmentalist conscience reminded me of the writings of Barbara Kingsolver Rebecca Solnit and Wendell Berry. Ogallala road conditions Bair begins by recalling the day she met Ward a stereotypically conservative cowboy on a visit back to her family s Kansas farm Ever since she learned that the Bair farm used 139 million gallons of water to irrigate crops in one season she had felt uneasy about their environmental impact and doggedly pursued the truth about Midwestern water usage She d been out tracing local water sources depressed by all the dry creek beds she kept finding and worried she d trespassed on the cowboy s land Instead to her surprise she found out that Ward knew her writing and shared her interest in local resources. Ogallala news and events facebook A long distance courtship sprang up between Ward s home in Kansas and hers back in Laramie Wyoming where she had a teenage son from her second marriage Jake Despite their political and literary differences I loved the scene in which Bair inspecting Ward s bookshelves realizes with horror that he owns the complete Ayn Rand oeuvre they developed a passionate connection Bair memorializes their relationship in surprisingly erotic terms she even uses their bond as a metaphor of regaining her appreciation for her homeland It was Kansas I d been having sex with melding with re fusing with My love for him was my love of home Part II marks a jolting change of subject matter as Bair returns to 1976 to remember her years of freedom out in the California desert She d married too young and now divorced at age 26 she wasn t going to let a second chance at independence pass her by She lived in a tiny rock house in the Mojave National Preserve drove around in a 1959 pickup and went camping in the desert at every opportunity these passages have a lot in common with Cheryl Strayed s Wild For the first time sincechildhood I was at home in my body in a place that felt like home Because I d had to rewin that centeredness I was not likely to lose it ever again However when another ill fated marriage left her pregnant she decided to move back to Kansas for her family s support. The ogallala road epub pdf Over the next two decades it was a struggle to decide how involved to be in the day to day running of the farm Bair was troubled not only by water usage but also by the potential health hazards of the fertilizers and pesticides her father liberally applied Now a single mother with a young son in tow she could no longer afford to be blas about these threats Almost without knowing it she became something of an activist in the vein of Terry Tempest Williams The text of the speech she gave at a symposium on the Ogallala Aquifer is particularly rousing it should convince every reader that our tacit complicity in factory farming and feedlots must end. Ebook the ogallala road review Like the road of the title this memoir rambles at times not always following a particularly logical thread Some things like Bair s current successful relationship get short shrift Yet her beautifully poetic writing sustains this narrative and promises many good books to come Life may have taken her along a rather meandering track but her engagement with nature has given her refreshment and solace along the way All life is wild at center We need the natural world to know ourselves Recommended read alikes Unremarried Widow by Artis Henderson an unlikely romance between two people of opposite political persuasions Remembering Wendell Berry a nostalgic tribute to traditional farming methods Small Wonder and Prodigal Summer Barbara Kingsolver Nonfiction Literature Fiction Thanks to Goodreads and Viking for the review copy This is an exceptional book about the largest aquifer in the U. The ogallala road literature fiction authors S and an important ecological warning about water and how it connects us all Julene Bair weaves her family history with her obsessions for water and the lowering levels of the Ogallala Aquifer which is a main source of water for much of the High Plains Throughout the book Bair wields her writing pedigree Iowa Writer s Workshop and you can read the influences of Wallace Stegner Marilynne Robinson and Jane Smiley She doesn t always keep the same voice but this doesn t disappoint or confuse the story When she talks about her family or her romantic relationship with her boyfriend Ward she writes with charm candidness and an almost self deprecating tone I think someone that reads lighthearted romance books would find this absorbing I didn t enjoy her depictions of her romantic relationships as much but I appreciated it being included and understand that it was necessary to the story in the end However when she writes about her time in the dessert as a young woman Bair is Zen like and writes with the passion of Emerson on Walden Pond It reminded me of the wonder I felt when I first read Jon Krakauer s Into the Wild If only McCandless had decided to partner with Julene Bair instead of going solo he d be alive today Bair is tough whip smart and a survivor in the true sense of the word and her passion for the natural world is exactly the type of advocate it needs right now Here s a sample of her striking prose The Smoky Valley returned me to sanity to wild land instead of the factory land to the winter yellow cougarlike pelt of the Pleistocene instead of the raw brown exposed flesh of the Anthropocene When I reached the bridge I pulled onto the shoulder turned off the engine and stepped into a state of anachronistic grace The mist stood thicker in the low places so that the blond grass glowed brightly on the hills Through immemorial time this mixture of native grasses wildflowers shrubs and trees and all the creates that lived in on or under them had coexisted You can t help but feel her passion for the land in passages like this Of course the most important part of this book is the ecological warning Bair wrote this book to inspire the reader to join her in protecting the land she so beautifully depicts Millions and millions of gallons of water are being pumped from the aquifer in order to irrigate corn crops in an area of the U. Epub the ogallala road free S that cannot sustain it The area does not get enough rain to support corn so farmers are forced to pump the water from the ground The aquifer underneath is now being drained and in jeopardy of extinction I grew up about 2 hours from the land described in this book and my own family also has land The Ogallala Aquifer is the sole water source for the town I grew up in and I have many memories of seeing the massive sprinklers during the summer months However as Bair points out this is not what this land is purposed for The land is grassland and better suited for grazing animals not water hogging corn crops I hope this book causes legislative change and the land is returned back to its natural purpose I m not spoiling the ending because this isn t that kind of book but it does end with a hopeful tone Thanks to the booming organic market change is already occurring but I do think Bair s account and research is a warning cry and call to action to do More needs to be done to save this water source and Bair s book could be just what s needed to get the ball rolling If you re at all interested in ecology in the U. City of ogallala website u Nonfiction Literature Fiction I received this book as a first read through Goodreads I really liked the story of Julene After all it is her memoir But I absolutely loved what she told us about the Ogallala Aquifer small farmers Big Farming and life in what I call the heartland of America The author was a pretty brave gal did a lot of stuff on her own but always found herself drawn back to the family farm I loved the author s descriptions of the land and her family Nonfiction Literature Fiction
| The Ogallala Road: A Memoir of Love and Reckoning By Julene Bair |
| 0670786047 |
| 9780670786046 |
| English |
| 288 |
| Hardcover |
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