This review appears in North Dakota Quarterly 83.1 (Winter 2016) Richard Wirick Lucia Berlin, A Manual for Cleaning Women. Ed. Stephen Emerson; Foreword by Lydia Davis. New York: Farrar, Straus, and Giroux, 2015. Pp. 432, $26 hd. The stories of Lucia Berlin (how’s that for a Cold War mother’s
When I agreed to review Richard Edwards’ book Natives of a Dry Place: Stories of Dakota Before the Oil Boom for a well-regarded journal, I almost immediately regretted it. I had already heard stories of proud North Dakotans giving this book, wrapped in lutefisk, to other North Dakotans at the holidays.
Julie Schumacher, Dear Committee Members. New York: Doubleday, 2014. Pp. 180, $22.95 hb. “Under whose aegis was it decided that Economics and English should share a building? Were criteria other than the alphabet considered?” —Professor Jay Fitger, Dear Committee Members “There is no such thing as a self-made man. Every
Andrew Lawler, Why Did the Chicken Cross the World? The Epic Saga of the Bird That Powers Civilization. New York: Atria Books, 2014. Pp. 336, $26 hb. This summer my partner Virgil Benoit and I hosted a fête du champagne in the new chicken house on our farm in northwestern
A Review Essay from North Dakota Quarterly 80.4-82.4 by Kate Sweney Margaret Wertheim and Christine Wertheim, Crochet Coral Reef: A Project by the Institute For Figuring. Los Angeles: Institute For Figuring 2015. The Institute For Figuring, a nonprofit education organization, was established by Martha Wertheim and Christine Wertheim to develop creative
North Dakota Quarterly 