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Jul 26, 2007

Lacey rated it:

I came across this book while doing some research for work, and when I told my boss I was interested in reading it, she generously loaned me her copy. I've always had a bit of a love affair with the Dakotas -- the vast openness and the miles upon miles between towns speaks to both the recluse and the small-town girl in me. In this book, Kathleen Norris has collected her essays about Dakota (she lived in S. Dakota but repeatedly refers to both Dakotas as just "Dakota"). I could apprecia More...

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Feb 15, 2009

Jackie rated it:

This is a book of essays about the genius loci of Dakota, where the vast geography and midwestern sensibility give it a distinct identity. Norris tells it like it is when it comes to Dakota:

"By the time a town is seventy-five or one hundred years old, it may be filled with those who have come to idealize their isolation. Often these are people who never left at all, or fled back to the safety of the town after a try at college a few hundred miles from home, or returned after c More...

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Sep 12, 2011

James rated it:

It is always interesting to see how a book stands up to a re-reading. This book fared fairly well in that I think it is one of Norris's best written books. There is little narrative sequence in Norris's reflections, save the general story of moving from New York to South Dakota and through a process, South Dakota becomes home. Instead, what we have here is a series of poetic reflections on Dakota, on place, on the Benedictine monastery (Norris is an Oblate).

I found it interesting that More...

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Aug 28, 2011

Laura rated it:

Poetry and Essay that recognizes the link of spiritual to geography. Our place affects our interaction with God. Norris in this book explores how the extremes of living in very rural South Dakota influenced her spirituality. I appreciated her lyricism.

As a North Dakotan by birth and choice but now living elsewhere, I miss the stark reminders of the true human position in the universe that the Dakotas provide their residents. When life and death and the cycles of seasons are har More...

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Jun 14, 2010

Melinda rated it:

Ok, so I'm on a Kathleen Norris kick here. What can I say?

Kathleen Norris grew up in Hawaii, but went to South Dakota every summer to spend time with her grandparents. She went to college on the east coast, worked for awhile after graduation in New York City, but eventually moved with her husband (also a poet) to her maternal grandparents home in South Dakota to live.

A parallel story is Kathleen Norris growing up not really understanding or liking the God she was taug More...

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Sep 16, 2007

Joanna rated it:

This book had some really cool bits and pieces about the spirituality and desolation found in the geography of South Dakota. However, i found those bits were wrapped in a thick layer of condescension and prejudicial judgement. I did not enjoy reading this book because I bristled at her tone so many times. She seemed to generalize about the people who made that space their home.

1 comment like (1 person liked it)

Feb 15, 2010

Debby rated it:

I picked up this book primarily because as I thumbed through it, I saw several references to Benedictines and my great uncle was a Benedictine missionary in South Dakota. I also thought it might have some insight into Native American spirituality which interested me. Right away as I began to read, the author told me there would be little discussion of N.A. religions. This was a very personal book about her experiences of moving to South Dakota to take over her grandparents' farm and all the memo More...

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Jul 20, 2010

Mike rated it:

Another book about the Plains, this one focuses on the "spiritual" side of the Plains. The writing is not quite as good as Annie Dillard's (who happens to provide a celebratory blurb about this book on the back cover), nor as profound; at times, I wished that the book had been written by Annie Dillard instead of Kathleen Norris. I appreciated some of the chapters that focused on Benedictine monks and showed their humanity - my favorite tidbit was one in which Norris is practicing silen More...

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Jun 01, 2011

Ed rated it:

The note inside the cover shows I bought this in January 1995 and I discovered it on a hidden shelf here in Norfolk and was prompted to read it because Kate had told me good things about her visit to her relative's farm in South Dakota last year. And I am so glad she did as this book moved me substantially and made me decide: Dakotas I must visit. It weaves some of the history of this rapidly depopulating western edge of South and North Dakota, with her spiritual development in the wilderness, a More...

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Jan 17, 2012

Will rated it:

Dakota: A Spiritual Geography may have been the best book I read in 2011 and it was almost the last book read then. It seemed as if all I had read up to that point (many of the Oz books based on an idyllic place, Gilead and Home which are about the prairie, and even Shadowland, a poor idea of the shifting wants and desires of a good home) were building up to reading this.

The author does a terribly fine –almost too fine—a job of describing the home that we make and the home that we i More...

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Mar 26, 2011

Kate rated it:

I read this years ago, and it was the first time I learned (by reading Norris's experience) to understand my sense of life through a sense of place. Geography is often ignored in this age when so few of us make our livings from the land, but the landscapes around us, what we see each day, the weather that blows around us, does impact us.
Having grown up in Kansas, I appreciated Norris's admiration for the plains -- a landscape many people write off as boring. There is nothing boring about a More...

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Mar 07, 2009

Jessica rated it:

As someone from a town of 1500 people, Norris's chapters on small town politics, social structures, religion, and gossip will become my life manual should I ever move back. What's impressive about this book is that she successfully interweaves spiritual poetry and musings into her more hard-nosed cultural criticism of life on the Great Plains. The book has many faults - by the last 50 pages or so, her obsession with monks becomes tiresome, and leaves you wondering about what her poor husband w More...

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May 02, 2008

Courtney rated it:

Really interesting look at life in western South Dakota written by a woman who moved from NY City into her grandmother's farmhouse. She had a really unique perspective on religion and spirituality.

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Jul 11, 2008

Sskous rated it:

With the severe plains of Dakota geography beneath, Norris moves into spiritual geography, opening horizons the reader never imagined. Excellent!

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Aug 05, 2009

Astin rated it:

Norris is pure poet, and her prose is delightful. Her subject matter is foreign to me - I have never experienced the stark constrasts and landscape of her Dakota. But after reading this book, I certainly feel like I've tasted it.

Her stories about small town insularity struck a cord - I grew up in a small town. And there is a deep truth in her conviction that she discovered incredible grace, courage, and generosity in the small communities of faith there. Groups of good people uni More...

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Oct 28, 2010

Marcia rated it:

I bought this book at Holy Cross Abbey in Berryville. In fact, I bought 3 of her books there! This book is more of a collection of well-written essays than a book with a beginning, a middle, and an end. In that sense, I was disappointed, but only up and until I realized at the end of chapter 2 what it was. The language is beautiful, the stories well-crafted. If you have ever spent time visiting a monastery on retreat, much of what she says will speak to you directly above and beyond the mas More...

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Mar 14, 2011

Cadie rated it:

This book was recommended to me offering another perspective on "moving down" in the world. What a beautiful description of committing to living a life of simplicity and hardship in one of the West's most forgotten landscapes. My favorite quote from the book is:

"When my third snail died," the little girl writhes, sitting half-way in, halfway out of her desk, one leg swinging in the air, "I said, I'm through with snails." She sits up to let me pass down the More...

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May 12, 2010

Marge rated it:

My second reading of this memoir was prompted by finding it referred to again and again in books on writing memoir. Once again, I loved the multiple angles from which Norris slowly and carefully looked at the Great Plains of her ancestors and of her own experience. I particularly loved the essay from which the book sprang, "Gatsby on the Plains," and, throughout, I was interested in both the people and the geography, but mostly, I was interested in the ways in which the spiritual asp More...

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May 28, 2011

Susan rated it:

Its been a while since I read 'Dakota" and wanted to add it to my GR'S...Her Journey was by choice,sort of,and Kathleen took me to places that I NEVER THOUGHT I would go...I am going to reread it..so I can post a more concise review..It was recommended by Bob Gray www.fresheyesnow.com and every book Bob has suggested was always thought Provoking...Just walking into Northshire Bookstore,knowing I would find a great book..when Bob was a bookseller there...I definitely recommend that you all h More...

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Oct 09, 2009

Julie rated it:

In "Dakota," author Kathleen Norris captures accurately, affectionately and yet also brutally honestly, what it is like to live in the American plains/Canadian prairie region of North America. On the positive side, she addresses the stark beauty, vast unpopulated territory, recent frontier history, and interesting ethnic mix. On the negative side, she confronts the isolation (both geographic and psychological) and potential loneliness which follows from it, often prevalent provincial a More...

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Oct 31, 2008

Mary rated it:

I read this several years ago and am rereading it. I was born and raised a Catholic and have since fallen away from the Church. Norris, as a Protestant, made me look again at the faith of Catholicism versus the Church of Catholicism (two very different things). While she does not say this explicitly in this book, for non-Catholic readers, the Church is a centuries old corporation of power and politics. The faith is just that: faith. It is what doesn't get practiced by the Vatican which tri More...

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Jul 11, 2008

Keith rated it:

In 1984 Kathleen sent me a copy a an essay she was planning to send off for publication. It was called "Gatsby on the Plains". She asked me what I thought of it. It offended me in a complex variety of ways. I wrote her back a six-page letter trying to explain what it was that so offended me about it. A few days later I received me letter back in the mail, with the note that the last couple of paragraphs were a bit confusing. Would I revise them so that she could send the letter i More...

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Jul 26, 2007

Louisa rated it:

I loved this book & love this writer. Here is how it starts: "The High Plains, the beginning of the desert West, often act as a crucible for those who inhabit them. Like Jacob's angel, the region requires that you wrestle with it before it bestows a blessing. This can mean driving through a snowstorm on icy roads, wondering whether you'll have to pull over & spend the night in your car, only to emerge under tag ends of clouds into a clear sky blazing with stars. Suddenly you know what More...

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Mar 24, 2010

Diane rated it:

I began reading this book because I thought it would be more about nature and the Dakotas. Although the book does contain these these sujects, it delves more into human spirituality, which really isn't my type of book. But it does contain interesting descriptions of South Dakota and its people, and about the monasteries found in North Dakota. Overall, it was an interesting, if no riveting, read, which brought back memories of my childhood living in Florence and Spencer, South Dakota.

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Oct 22, 2011

Scott rated it:

I recently pulled this off the shelf for a reread, recalling that I enjoyed it the first time and wanting to read yet another western 'place' novel, having just finished Hole in the Sky and The Meadow. Probably made a mistake rereading this after those those two outstanding novels. While good, I found it too heavily spiritual and her frank depiction of the insular thinking of the locals disturbed me: undoubtedly true, yet just not what I hoped for. Maybe a reread later on....

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Feb 03, 2011

Daughters added it

Kathleen Norris’ autobiographical account of her move from New York to her grandparents’ homestead in rural South Dakota, and her adjustment and life in a small town. This sparked a lively and engaging discussion about “home,” roots, and traditions. The book provides a view into the life of a monastery as well as the community in a small town church. The book was provocative in a positive way that led to discussion and sharing. Recommended (Review by Metro West)

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Feb 10, 2008

Tama rated it:

It was some time ago that I read Kathleen Norris' Cloister Walk and I picked up Dakota from the library without even making the connection. I was just interested in the aspect of the book being about Dakota and Spirituality. I think the book will resonate more deeply in the heart of someone who has experienced the Dakotas---the vastness and the climate and the small community living... So it was a sweet reminder and a familiar place she shared in her stories and poetry. How could one ever forget More...

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Dec 25, 2010

Lynne rated it:

One of the best books I have ever read. I risked ruining a friendship when a friend of mine lagged in returning the copy I'd lent her - the one that had all my precious highlights and margin notes. My roots on my mother's side are in North Dakota, so this "spiritual geography" resonated even more than the deeply moving introspection on life, humans, small towns, artistry, marriage, and above all, spirituality. Thank you, Kathleen.

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Jan 06, 2011

Judy rated it:

Whether you are religious or not, this book has some great pearls of wisdom. The feel of the book echoes the sense of the places that Kathleen Norris is writing about. It is open and moves easily between weather, geography, place, and mind. Even as I found myself arguing with some of her ideas I was enjoying the thought process and the evolution of the book. It was a calming and centering read and I feel wiser for having read it. Even if I am not ready to engage in organized religion. It More...

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Dec 15, 2009

cliff rated it:

Life in an America that few of us know - small towns on the Great Plains. The opportunities for contemplation and discovery offset (to some degree) the harsh and often dangerous climate, loneliness and privation. The analogy to monastic life was intriguing. Checked this book out of the library because my daughter will be attending school in North Dakota. It was not what I anticipated - it was something more special.

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