Windfall

The Prairie Woman Who Lost Her Way and the Great-Granddaughter Who Found Her

De: Erika Bolstad

Narrado por: Marni Penning

At first, Erika Bolstad knew only one thing about her great-grandmother, Anna: she was a homesteader on the North Dakota prairies in the early 1900s before her husband committed her to an asylum under mysterious circumstances. As Erika's mother was dying, she revealed more: their family still owned the mineral rights to Anna's land—and oil companies were interested in the black gold beneath the prairies. Their family, Erika learned, could get rich thanks to the legacy of a woman nearly lost to history.

Anna left no letters or journals, and very few photographs of her had survived. But Erika was drawn to the young woman who never walked free of the asylum that imprisoned her. As a journalist well versed in the effects of fossil fuels on climate change, Erika felt the dissonance of what she knew and the barely acknowledged whisper that had followed her family across the Great Plains for generations: we could be rich. Desperate to learn more about her great-grandmother and the oil industry that changed the face of the American West forever, Erika set out for North Dakota to unearth what she could of the past. What she discovers is a land of boom-and-bust cycles and families trying their best to eke out a living in an unforgiving landscape, bringing to life the ever-present American question: What does it mean to be rich?

©2023 Erika Bolstad (P)2023 Dreamscape Media, LLC

Genealogy, climate change and boom/bust cycles

I didn’t realize the different layers woven into this story and felt the author did a great job of combining facts with emotions. As someone who loves genealogy, I was drawn to the book and appreciated the candor of what she discovered but the other side of this book with the climate change and oil industry really opened my eyes.

Prairie woman finds ancestors

Interesting and heart warming.
I enjoyed how this woman looked into her ancestry and also her own personal experience.

Educating and Emotional

I enjoyed the book. At times, it felt like a text book, but I’m not sure how else she could have written it. I learned so much about fracking, the oil companies and how our government straddles these issues. I have been educated through this book and can no longer be ignorant!

Excellent look into importance of history

Erika eloquently expresses the importance of knowing the truth of those who came before us. Their struggles are often buried because it is painful to know them. She gives good reflection to the American dream of riches, the inequity of wealth and its effects on our future environment. She wove into the narration her honest recounting of her own struggle with infertility. I highly recommend this book. Marni Penning, the reader, has the perfect voice to tell Erika and Anna’s stories.

Struggle

I struggled to finish this. Performance voice was depressing. Story slow., and very one sided.