One Degree West: Reflections of a Plainsdaughter

by Julene Bair

A powerful elegy - flirty and tender - for American farm life. A daughter's story of fierce family struggle and love. These linked essays have the immediacy of fiction and an enduring wisdom attaining to history.

Genres: Memoir, Nonfiction

182 pages, Paperback

First published April 15, 2000

About the author

Julene Bair is the author of The Ogallala Road, A Memoir of Love and Reckoning (Viking Penguin 2014). Her first book, One Degree West: Reflections of a Plainsdaughter, won Mid-List Press’s First Series Award and a WILLA Award from Women Writing the West. Bair’s essays have appeared in venues ranging from the New York Times to High Country News. A 2004 NEA fellow, she has taught at the University of Wyoming, the University of Iowa, the Iowa Summer Writing Festival, Denver’s Lighthouse Writers and the Jackson Hole Writing Festival. Prior to teaching and writing, her career interests ranged from the management of a San Francisco recording studio to filmmaker to farmer. A graduate of the University of Iowa Writers' Workshop and the University of Iowa Nonfiction Writing Program, she now lives in Longmont, Colorado.

Reviews

[Catherine · Rating 3 out of 5]

Julene Bair grew up on a farm in Kansas during the mid 20th century, the only girl in a family with two brothers. Her memoir focuses on the unspoken but nonnegotiable roles of women and men in that time and place. The book mostly consists of anecdotes from her childhood and adulthood that caused her to reject this path for herself, while coming to terms with the ways it worked for her parents. The pace is languid, and the memories are mostly nonlinear, which for me negatively impacted the flow. The analysis at the end brought it all together pretty well. 3.5 stars.

[Kate Lawrence · Rating 5 out of 5]

This first book by Bair is every bit as engaging as her subsequent Ogallala Road; the two books complement each other by telling different aspects of her life as a "plainsdaughter." I love the way she tells her story and, as an exact contemporary also growing up in Kansas, I can relate to that time when girls' and womens' lives were so circumscribed. I've known people just like the ones described, and am greatly impressed by her skill in bringing them to life on the page.

[Elisabeth · Rating 5 out of 5]

Thoughtful, elegant prose -- hoping for more from this writer.

[Mary Beth · Rating 5 out of 5]

A collection of heartfelt essays about love, land, and love of the land. I read this a long time ago, but it still resonates with me.