The Personal History of Rachel DuPree

A Novel

By: Ann Weisgarber

Narrated by: Quincy Tyler Bernstine

Soon to be a Major Motion Picture Starring Emmy Award Winner and Oscar Nominee Viola Davis; "An eye-opening look at the little-explored area of a black frontier woman in the American West." --Chicago Sun-Times

Praised by Alice Walker and many other bestselling writers, The Personal History of Rachel DuPree is an award-winning debut novel with incredible heart about life on the prairie as it's rarely been seen. Reminiscent of The Color Purple, as well as the frontier novels of Laura Ingalls Wilder and Willa Cather, it opens a window on the little-known history of African American homesteaders and gives voice to an extraordinary heroine who embodies the spirit that built America.

Homesteading in South Dakota

In the early 1900 many set out to claim a homestead in South Dakota. Including the adult children of former slaves.

The Personal History of Rachel Dupree is a novel but based on this historical period of time . It shows the hardships of anyone who tries to turn the vast prairie land into a place to farm and raise a family. The story does a great job of injecting the extra challenges of race without taking away from the isolation, hardship, and great risk of homesteaders in the Dakotas.

Didn't buy it

How could the family live on a cattle ranch and yet be starving? Couldn't they kill a steer and eat hamburger? This confused me. Still I liked the book.

The. Narrator Did a Stunning Performance

The story was phenomenal on so many levels. The weight we carry can be unbearable. But once we rise up, there is no stopping us! I feel so inspired by this narrative!

Good historical drama

Very good historical book about a black family working to eck out a living in the brutal Dakota Badlands. The author is good at making Rachel and Isaac DuPree into multi-faceted characters (though Isaac isn't particularly sympathetic, and Rachel is often too weak willed). The plotting is rather slow-paced, but the drama of daily living in a harsh, unforgiving environment drives the narrative. (I recommend having a bottle of water at the ready while listening to the descriptions of drought; you will need it )

1800s homesteading in all its pain & minutiae

It's hard to come upon books that deal with the day to day women's work of the past. I wonder if she called this a personal history because as opposed to men's histories, it isn't about conquering or achieving something great in the world's eyes so much as the work women did privately and the Incredible strength that they had. what they cooked, the furnishings of her home, her Chicago childhood as a black girl in the early 20th century, what they wore, how they secured water, the little things she was able to give her children such as rag dolls and fairy tales. Some parts of this book were difficult to listen to. It just goes on and on. Hungry children gathering cow chips for the stove in the miserable biting cold of South Dakota. Their thirst through the drought is palpable; the dust in their throats in mouths and how she dreams of washing everything when the rains come, as her husband promises they will. What I really loved about this book, aside from satisfying my curiosity about what it would have been like on a daily basis to live as a woman in that time, is the pure, selfless heart of Rachel Dupree as she works to maintain her love for her husband and her children's innocence, wanting to give what she calls a dab of sweetness to their lives, which she admits will probably mostly be hard work.