Prairie Silence: A Memoir
In this affecting memoir, Hoffert proves that while you can indeed go home again, it will, of course, never be quite the same. A true child of the prairie, she grew up on a farm in North Dakota, experiencing, as many of her generational peers, a love-hate relationship with the vast, stark terrain and the decaying small towns that characterize the contemporary plains states. Despite her affinity with her childhood home, her essential need to escape was made more acute by the fact that she recognized, at an early age, that she was gay. Still, the literal and metaphorical prairie silence eventually drew her home for a monthlong stay at harvest time, “because eventually to resolve everything, to truly find peace, you must come to terms with the place your inner soul calls home.“ A heartfelt coming-out story as well as an eloquent elegy to a rural way of life that is rapidly vanishing from the American landscape. --Margaret Flanagan