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The Horizontal World: Growing Up Wild in the Middle of Nowhere
Debra Marquart grew up on a farm in rural North Dakota - on land her family had worked for generations. From the earliest age she knew she wanted out; surely life had more to offer than this unyielding daily grind, she thought. But she was never able to abandon it completely.
304 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 2006
15 people are currently reading
466 people want to read
About the author
Debra Marquart
17 books27 followersDebra Marquart is a professor of English at Iowa State University. She teaches in the MFA Program in Creative Writing & Environment at Iowa State University and the Stonecoast Low-Residency MFA program at the University of Southern Maine. Marquart's work has appeared in numerous journals such as The North American Review, Three Penny Review, New Letters, River City, Crab Orchard Review, Cumberland Poetry Review, The Sun Magazine, Southern Poetry Review, Orion, Mid-American Review and Witness.
In the seventies and eighties, Marquart was a touring road musician with rock and heavy metal bands. Her collection of short stories, The Hunger Bone: Rock & Roll Stories draws from her experiences as a female road musician. Marquart continues to perform with a jazz-poetry rhythm & blues project, The Bone People, with whom she has released two CDs: Orange Parade (acoustic rock), and A Regular Dervish (jazz-poetry).
Marquart's work has received numerous awards and commendations, including the John Guyon Nonfiction Award (Crab Orchard Review), the Mid-American Review Nonfiction Award, The Headwater's Prize from New Rivers Press, the Minnesota Voices Award, the Pearl Poetry Award (Pearl Editions), the Shelby Foote Prize for the Essay from the Faulkner Society, a Pushcart Prize, and a 2008 NEA Creative Writing Fellowship.
A performance poet, Marquart is the author of two poetry collections: Everything's a Verb and From Sweetness. Her memoir, The Horizontal World: Growing Up Wild in the Middle of Nowhere, was published by Counterpoint Books in 2006. It received the "Elle Lettres" award from Elle Magazine and the 2007 PEN USA Creative Nonfiction Award. Marquart is currently at work on a novel, set in Greece, titled The Olive Harvest, and a roots memoir about emigration, geographical flight, and cultural amnesia titled Somewhere Else this Time Tomorrow.
In the seventies and eighties, Marquart was a touring road musician with rock and heavy metal bands. Her collection of short stories, The Hunger Bone: Rock & Roll Stories draws from her experiences as a female road musician. Marquart continues to perform with a jazz-poetry rhythm & blues project, The Bone People, with whom she has released two CDs: Orange Parade (acoustic rock), and A Regular Dervish (jazz-poetry).
Marquart's work has received numerous awards and commendations, including the John Guyon Nonfiction Award (Crab Orchard Review), the Mid-American Review Nonfiction Award, The Headwater's Prize from New Rivers Press, the Minnesota Voices Award, the Pearl Poetry Award (Pearl Editions), the Shelby Foote Prize for the Essay from the Faulkner Society, a Pushcart Prize, and a 2008 NEA Creative Writing Fellowship.
A performance poet, Marquart is the author of two poetry collections: Everything's a Verb and From Sweetness. Her memoir, The Horizontal World: Growing Up Wild in the Middle of Nowhere, was published by Counterpoint Books in 2006. It received the "Elle Lettres" award from Elle Magazine and the 2007 PEN USA Creative Nonfiction Award. Marquart is currently at work on a novel, set in Greece, titled The Olive Harvest, and a roots memoir about emigration, geographical flight, and cultural amnesia titled Somewhere Else this Time Tomorrow.
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 103 reviews
July 13, 2008
I grow tired of reading memoirs, since it's the quick and easy way to publish for tenure-hungry academics. But Marquart does something here that is unique, carefully tiptoeing self-indulgence for the greater ideas of history, legacy, land and place. Her history weaves with the landscape, with the legacies of the family and the struggles of place in such a way that you are drawn to that desolate place, hungry to discover its underlying waterway.
What makes this piece so wonderful, aside from its stories and depictions, is the creedance given to other writers and story tellers who share their part in the legacy and history of the landscape - this landscape and others. Marquart gave me a whole new reading list so I, too, may unpack the idea of legacy, landscape and place with what roads she traveled to think about it herself.
Great piece that leaves the reminder of what wonders that the US holds in its diverse patchwork of place.
What makes this piece so wonderful, aside from its stories and depictions, is the creedance given to other writers and story tellers who share their part in the legacy and history of the landscape - this landscape and others. Marquart gave me a whole new reading list so I, too, may unpack the idea of legacy, landscape and place with what roads she traveled to think about it herself.
Great piece that leaves the reminder of what wonders that the US holds in its diverse patchwork of place.
July 25, 2008
I enjoyed "The Horizontal World"; the writing was poetic, sensual, and lush and it compelled me. The memoir is about Marquart's troubled relationship to the small, rural world of North Dakota where she grew up. She does a fantastic job of evoking the strangeness of the agricultural, North Dakota landscape -- and why that was so strange to her. That aspect of the book really interested me. And she says some really interesting things about home, land, and sexuality. But the memoir was also disjointed and I felt like it wasn't really about anything. Because of that, a lot of it struck me as self-indulgent. It wasn't clear why she was writing it, other than to tell the reader what it was like to grow up on a farm which doesn't seem like enough of a reason to write a memoir. Still, there were many things in this memoir that I admire.
August 25, 2012
North Dakota is a land of extremes. Extreme cold weather in the winter, with snow piled high. Extreme hot and humid weather in summer with a sea of praire grass and crops blowing in the wind. North Dakota is inhabited by hearty people who are drawn to the land and landscape. Not everyone can survive here.
Debra Marquart was born in North Dakota and raised on a farm that has passed through four generations. Beginning with her great grandfather who emigrated from Russia in the late 1800's, to Deb's brother who currently owns it, the farm has an undeniable pull on the Marquart family. Yet from an early age Deb had plans to escape the farm and the rural ways of life and planned to be a city girl. Milking cows early every morning, driving the tractor, planting corn, all of it hard work. She yearned for more and as she read books to escape her daily reality, she made plans to leave.
Marquart's memoir is a tale of leaving home and her struggle to retrieve the sense of self she gets from the land we call North Dakota. Marquart includes her personal family history and their inherent and meaningful ties to the land. She includes the history and geography of the land we call North Dakota. You will laugh and cry along with Marquart and try to figure out how you are related after reading The Horizontal World.
North Dakota is the land of farmers and lonely oil boom workers, sunflower fields, beautiful buttes and the stunning Killdeer mountains and canyons. I have lived in Minnesota all my life and never visited North Dakota until this year. I read Marquart's book as a way to become familiar with a place I've never been to and to understand it's people and history and I am so glad I did. Being a midwestern girl myself and spending summers on my grandfathers Wisconsin farm, I could relate to so much of Marquart's life in the middle of nowhere. I remember plucking chickens and milking cows and smelling like manure most of the time and I couldn't wait to leave. As an adult who now lives in the city, I cherish my time on the farm and it seems like it is always calling my name and reminding me of my connection to the land I love.
The Horizontal World captures the essence of the people, the place and the land of North Dakota.
Debra Marquart was born in North Dakota and raised on a farm that has passed through four generations. Beginning with her great grandfather who emigrated from Russia in the late 1800's, to Deb's brother who currently owns it, the farm has an undeniable pull on the Marquart family. Yet from an early age Deb had plans to escape the farm and the rural ways of life and planned to be a city girl. Milking cows early every morning, driving the tractor, planting corn, all of it hard work. She yearned for more and as she read books to escape her daily reality, she made plans to leave.
Marquart's memoir is a tale of leaving home and her struggle to retrieve the sense of self she gets from the land we call North Dakota. Marquart includes her personal family history and their inherent and meaningful ties to the land. She includes the history and geography of the land we call North Dakota. You will laugh and cry along with Marquart and try to figure out how you are related after reading The Horizontal World.
North Dakota is the land of farmers and lonely oil boom workers, sunflower fields, beautiful buttes and the stunning Killdeer mountains and canyons. I have lived in Minnesota all my life and never visited North Dakota until this year. I read Marquart's book as a way to become familiar with a place I've never been to and to understand it's people and history and I am so glad I did. Being a midwestern girl myself and spending summers on my grandfathers Wisconsin farm, I could relate to so much of Marquart's life in the middle of nowhere. I remember plucking chickens and milking cows and smelling like manure most of the time and I couldn't wait to leave. As an adult who now lives in the city, I cherish my time on the farm and it seems like it is always calling my name and reminding me of my connection to the land I love.
The Horizontal World captures the essence of the people, the place and the land of North Dakota.
February 27, 2009
A beautiful memoir.
(p. 49) "Years later, this son will become minorly famous--wildly famous in this county--when he makes it onto the 'Lawrence Welk Show.' He'll be groomed as the new accordian maestro, the heir apparent to Myron Floren, who was the heir apparent to Lawrence Welk. This is polka country, the deep vinegar core of the sauerkraut triangle. The accordian is our most soulful, ancestral instrument."
(p. 49) "Years later, this son will become minorly famous--wildly famous in this county--when he makes it onto the 'Lawrence Welk Show.' He'll be groomed as the new accordian maestro, the heir apparent to Myron Floren, who was the heir apparent to Lawrence Welk. This is polka country, the deep vinegar core of the sauerkraut triangle. The accordian is our most soulful, ancestral instrument."
September 2, 2015
Marquart's family has been on their land in North Dakota for generations—her great-grandfather established the farm, got it running, made a success of it. Marquart, as the youngest and a girl, was raised without the expectation that she would be the one to take the helm after her father; she was raised with roots but with the option to uproot. (Which plants flourish best where they took seed, and which can take wing?)
For what it's worth, two points of comparison: The Guynd and The Orchard. Both of those talk about family roots and obligations as well...although both Rathbone and Weir, unlike Marquart, married into those roots and obligations. For Weir, it's an apple orchard. For Rathbone, it's a Scottish estate. Either way, though, it's not just a job that's inherited—it's a way of life. Marquart inherited neither, but it is with both relief and wistfulness that she looks back on her upbringing.
So...memoir of growing up and breaking free and coming to realise that while you may not be able to go home again, you can't always leave home behind, either. Great swathes of really lovely writing here (looks like the author's a poet first and foremost), though it sometimes tips into the realm of 'too arty for me'. (Mind...I have a relatively low tolerance.) Loved the way she details the complexities of her relationship with her parents. Makes me wonder about the lives we do and don't choose—after all, her parents, too, are products of that legacy.
For what it's worth, two points of comparison: The Guynd and The Orchard. Both of those talk about family roots and obligations as well...although both Rathbone and Weir, unlike Marquart, married into those roots and obligations. For Weir, it's an apple orchard. For Rathbone, it's a Scottish estate. Either way, though, it's not just a job that's inherited—it's a way of life. Marquart inherited neither, but it is with both relief and wistfulness that she looks back on her upbringing.
So...memoir of growing up and breaking free and coming to realise that while you may not be able to go home again, you can't always leave home behind, either. Great swathes of really lovely writing here (looks like the author's a poet first and foremost), though it sometimes tips into the realm of 'too arty for me'. (Mind...I have a relatively low tolerance.) Loved the way she details the complexities of her relationship with her parents. Makes me wonder about the lives we do and don't choose—after all, her parents, too, are products of that legacy.
March 29, 2014
If you're from the Great Plains or even its emerald edge, as I am, how can you not read a book with a cover like that which graces The Horizontal World, Growing up in the Middle of Nowhere: a Memoir?
Debra Marquart (her family lost the traditional d somewhere on Ellis Island, she says) is, in some ways, the proverbial young rebel farm kid who cannot handle another minute on the back forty until, years later, almost as elegy, she comes to love that which she needed so wildly to leave. There's lots that one recognizes in the small-town descriptions, lots that's familiar to those of us who grew up in the quiet and gracious world of the Upper Midwest, lots to see in a country so wide open.
Still, most Midwest readers already know the story. Maybe it was Willa Cather who wrote it first, a woman who also couldn't handle home but finally couldn't leave it behind. There's less of the rock band excesses the naughty-girl rebel lived through than one might expect in a memoir like this, given that time's prominence in her life story; but then, I'm guessing she kept hold the handbrake because, as a Midwesterner, she guessed some discretion was simply the right thing to do.
Even though the trajectory of Debra Marquart's memoir wasn't a surprise, reading her story was still a great joy.
Debra Marquart (her family lost the traditional d somewhere on Ellis Island, she says) is, in some ways, the proverbial young rebel farm kid who cannot handle another minute on the back forty until, years later, almost as elegy, she comes to love that which she needed so wildly to leave. There's lots that one recognizes in the small-town descriptions, lots that's familiar to those of us who grew up in the quiet and gracious world of the Upper Midwest, lots to see in a country so wide open.
Still, most Midwest readers already know the story. Maybe it was Willa Cather who wrote it first, a woman who also couldn't handle home but finally couldn't leave it behind. There's less of the rock band excesses the naughty-girl rebel lived through than one might expect in a memoir like this, given that time's prominence in her life story; but then, I'm guessing she kept hold the handbrake because, as a Midwesterner, she guessed some discretion was simply the right thing to do.
Even though the trajectory of Debra Marquart's memoir wasn't a surprise, reading her story was still a great joy.
October 15, 2008
I was connected to Fargo's literary "scene" many years ago and first encountered Marquart as a writer of poetry. I would classify her as a poet, who also writes prose. She writes with a poet's style, infused with rich language, metaphors, and details.
In her story of growing up in a small-town in North Dakota, Marquart weaves in references to literature, to geology, to history... that help us understand where she is from, but also show the connectedness of all these disparate things; timeless and universal, however unique they may seem to each of us as we walk our own paths.
I am familiar with Marquart's place; rural North Dakota. My place is a small town in northern Minnesota, just 45-minutes from the North Dakota border. We grew up sneering with superiority at our neighbors to the west, pitying their flat dry terrain. The contrast between them and us made us feel doubly blessed to have green hills and pretty clear lakes.
If I taught a writing class, I would ask the students to read this book and then write their own story, the story of their own place. It's a book that inspires me to want to write that story, too.
In her story of growing up in a small-town in North Dakota, Marquart weaves in references to literature, to geology, to history... that help us understand where she is from, but also show the connectedness of all these disparate things; timeless and universal, however unique they may seem to each of us as we walk our own paths.
I am familiar with Marquart's place; rural North Dakota. My place is a small town in northern Minnesota, just 45-minutes from the North Dakota border. We grew up sneering with superiority at our neighbors to the west, pitying their flat dry terrain. The contrast between them and us made us feel doubly blessed to have green hills and pretty clear lakes.
If I taught a writing class, I would ask the students to read this book and then write their own story, the story of their own place. It's a book that inspires me to want to write that story, too.
September 25, 2007
I bought this book at a used bookstore a couple months ago based solely on the cover and the description on the book flap. I had read a few pages of it here and there put never really got into it. And then I picked it up again recently, started reading from the beginning, and became thoroughly consumed with her writing. I finished over half of the book in that first day, and the rest of it by the end of the week. She touches on a number of ideas around growing up in the Midwest that I am just beginning to dig up in my own writing, and she weaves it all together beautifully. I hope I am eventually able to do the same.
June 1, 2008
As a native North Dakotan, I can say that this book, at least in the chapters regarding North Dakota, is spot on in capturing the essence of life on the prairie in the late 2oth century.
I had the extreme pleasure of listening to the author speak at Bismarck State College, and get an autographed copy for myself and for my daughter. My daughter, like the author, was all too eager to leave the state. My hope is that she, like the author, may one day realize just what she left behind when she viewed ND in her rear-view mirror.
I had the extreme pleasure of listening to the author speak at Bismarck State College, and get an autographed copy for myself and for my daughter. My daughter, like the author, was all too eager to leave the state. My hope is that she, like the author, may one day realize just what she left behind when she viewed ND in her rear-view mirror.
December 3, 2017
This book is beautiful and painful and sensuous. Another reviewer referred to the people who inhabit North Dakota as hearty; which is true, but we are also hardy. Deb traces her ancestry with beautifully told stories of success and agonizing depictions of the horrors of her immigrant grandparents. Being from North Dakota myself, I can understand Deb’s love of the land and landscape. It is important to know that while the setting of this book is North Dakota, the familial relationships woven throughout this story are not confined within any state’s borders.
April 11, 2023
Marquart was a rebellious Napoleon, North Dakota "farm girl" who threw herself into the life of a rock band lead singer before emerging as a writer and Iowa's current poet laureate. This memoir is beautifully and engagingly written. Her love for the land and for her family (even in difficult times) shines through.
Read
April 10, 2017I loved this book. I knew nothing about North or even South Dakota. Her style of writing was so different and interesting that I came away understanding a bit about her life and her choices.
August 20, 2008
I am not entirely sure what to think about this one. I was asked to read it for work (I work for a small liberal arts college) as they are doing a campus learning experience around this book.
I think she is a really great writer, wonderful imagery, and this book was an interesting and quick read. I also enjoyed her often mentioning different "midwest" cultural aspects, which I can certainly identify with.
I was initially a little put off by the description of this book as I thought it might be midwest bashing as it really focuses on her "escape" from her roots in North Dakota. Although I was wrong in this initial impression, (she really does speak of the Midwest fairly and of her feeling of being pulled back to her roots) by the end of the book, I still had this "holier-than-thou" feeling from her, kind of like if you don't leave your roots, then you really haven't lived or aren't worldly. I know I am a little overly sensitive to that sentiment, and any negative comments towards the midwest, so perhaps I am reading too much into it (no pun intended!) I also didn't care for her frequently referencing what a bad ass she was, in her 20s particularly. Unless she shielded her readers from her hard core life experiences, I really missed what made her so bad ass.
Yup, I'm kind of on the fence about this one.
I think she is a really great writer, wonderful imagery, and this book was an interesting and quick read. I also enjoyed her often mentioning different "midwest" cultural aspects, which I can certainly identify with.
I was initially a little put off by the description of this book as I thought it might be midwest bashing as it really focuses on her "escape" from her roots in North Dakota. Although I was wrong in this initial impression, (she really does speak of the Midwest fairly and of her feeling of being pulled back to her roots) by the end of the book, I still had this "holier-than-thou" feeling from her, kind of like if you don't leave your roots, then you really haven't lived or aren't worldly. I know I am a little overly sensitive to that sentiment, and any negative comments towards the midwest, so perhaps I am reading too much into it (no pun intended!) I also didn't care for her frequently referencing what a bad ass she was, in her 20s particularly. Unless she shielded her readers from her hard core life experiences, I really missed what made her so bad ass.
Yup, I'm kind of on the fence about this one.
June 8, 2010
Well, I didn't feel that this book was sewn together as neatly as I would have liked, and there were definitely parts that seemed out of place, but there were lovely pieces as well.
Here are a couple of my favorite paragraphs:
“There at that supper table I learned to listen. As the youngest child, I was at play in a field that everyone around me had long ago mastered. But listeners have their place in stories as do laughers, a job my grandmother took on. Without listeners and laughers, stories have nowhere to live. They float away and are forgotten.”
Regarding her grandmother:
“When you went to visit her, even if you’d just seen her the day before, even if you were just stopping by on an errand, she’d greet you with tears in her eyes as if you’d been off on a long journey. She’d raise her warm, wrinkled hands to your face and pull you to her, your foreheads meeting, and in that moment you could feel that place inside the circle that she kept clear for you, and there was nothing you could ever do to change that basic, natural fact.”
The author was a bit too unloveable for me at times, particularly in her harsh words about her mother. I'm glad I read it though, and I enjoyed revisiting some of my childhood farm memories in the process. Side note: I loved the book cover.
Here are a couple of my favorite paragraphs:
“There at that supper table I learned to listen. As the youngest child, I was at play in a field that everyone around me had long ago mastered. But listeners have their place in stories as do laughers, a job my grandmother took on. Without listeners and laughers, stories have nowhere to live. They float away and are forgotten.”
Regarding her grandmother:
“When you went to visit her, even if you’d just seen her the day before, even if you were just stopping by on an errand, she’d greet you with tears in her eyes as if you’d been off on a long journey. She’d raise her warm, wrinkled hands to your face and pull you to her, your foreheads meeting, and in that moment you could feel that place inside the circle that she kept clear for you, and there was nothing you could ever do to change that basic, natural fact.”
The author was a bit too unloveable for me at times, particularly in her harsh words about her mother. I'm glad I read it though, and I enjoyed revisiting some of my childhood farm memories in the process. Side note: I loved the book cover.
September 14, 2015
To be honest, I couldn't finish this book. I had read a chapter from here last summer and absolutely loved it, and marked it as a must-read. When my professor suggested that I read it, I couldn't wait to start. I'm really bummed that I didn't like it nearly as much as I thought I would. I appreciate Debra's writing, but it did not keep my attention. I rarely ever leave a book unfinished, but the first one hundred pages I read was a huge history and background on North Dakota that I thought she took way too long with. While that information is useful, it didn't need nearly as much attention as she gave it, which led me to ask why I was reading it. I don't think I ever reached a point that told me why her story was important, or what was at stake for her. I won't shut Debra out completely as her writing is very poetic and intriguing but the story perhaps needed some more work.
August 9, 2018
We children of North Dakota are programmed for flight. We populate the cities of this country, living as expatriate small-town midwesterners. We grew up wild in the middle of nowhere with the nagging suspicion that life was certainly elsewhere... But we always feel the pull of our home ground. p. 69
Sometimes it's hard to pin down a family story. They shift before you like mirages.... So you have to keep an eye on family stories, lest the fall through the crack between two worlds. p. 93-4
Already she has an eye for metaphor that will only cause her problems. p.99
It looms in our imaginations, no matter where me migrate to. We know the trees we watered as children and imagine them now to be fifty feet tall, never returning to discover they've withered and died or been chopped down long ago. We know the location of the barn, the chicken coop, the roads that lead out, and the fences that hem everything in. We could walk this territory the dark, it appears to often in our dreams. p. 125-6
The motherliness - the feminine lineage, the successive generations of women in a family who believe in you well before you exist and remember you long after you are gone. A rupture in the motherliness has serious ramifications, which include the loss of family knowledge, stories, recipes, culture, and a sense of one's place in the family line. p. 134
We repeated to each other hourly the five or six things we knew for certain. p. 188
This was nothing that any of us talked about in the hospital, for we were best at talking around the edges of things. p. 206
Another reason you can't go home again is that the shape you made upon leaving does not match our shape upon return. Not even for a weekend is it comfortable to step through the ill-fitting hole that your exit created and take up residence in your old life. But return you must, if only in imagination. For if it's true that you can't go home again then it must be equally true that you can't not go home again. Your home ground has left an indelible imprint on you.... "you may love the place if you flourished there, or hate the place if you suffered there. But love it or hate it, you cannot shake free.... You still bear the impression of that first ground." p. 237
Sometimes it's hard to pin down a family story. They shift before you like mirages.... So you have to keep an eye on family stories, lest the fall through the crack between two worlds. p. 93-4
Already she has an eye for metaphor that will only cause her problems. p.99
It looms in our imaginations, no matter where me migrate to. We know the trees we watered as children and imagine them now to be fifty feet tall, never returning to discover they've withered and died or been chopped down long ago. We know the location of the barn, the chicken coop, the roads that lead out, and the fences that hem everything in. We could walk this territory the dark, it appears to often in our dreams. p. 125-6
The motherliness - the feminine lineage, the successive generations of women in a family who believe in you well before you exist and remember you long after you are gone. A rupture in the motherliness has serious ramifications, which include the loss of family knowledge, stories, recipes, culture, and a sense of one's place in the family line. p. 134
We repeated to each other hourly the five or six things we knew for certain. p. 188
This was nothing that any of us talked about in the hospital, for we were best at talking around the edges of things. p. 206
Another reason you can't go home again is that the shape you made upon leaving does not match our shape upon return. Not even for a weekend is it comfortable to step through the ill-fitting hole that your exit created and take up residence in your old life. But return you must, if only in imagination. For if it's true that you can't go home again then it must be equally true that you can't not go home again. Your home ground has left an indelible imprint on you.... "you may love the place if you flourished there, or hate the place if you suffered there. But love it or hate it, you cannot shake free.... You still bear the impression of that first ground." p. 237
October 31, 2019
Debra Marquart wrote an engrossing memoir, a story of her life and her relationship with not only her family, but with the horizontal landscape of North Dakota. Her great-grandfather escaped conscription into the Russian military, immigrated to the States, and laid claim to the unforgiving land in the far reaches of America's north plains. Her family has farmed and molded this acreage around the town of Napoleon, ND for several generations.
Debra seemed desperate at an early age to escape the bondage of endless chores and the expectations that heritage plays in the land. She had no desire to inherit the land, which means to be bound to it forever and ever, passing down through endless generations. She made her escape to tour with a rock band for a year, upending her parents' expectations that she would marry a farmer and become a farm wife. After that phase of her life, she ended up becoming a teacher and writer. She wrote: "And no matter how fiercely I struggled to evade my fate as a farmer's wife, becoming a writer instead, how strange it is to realize that writing, the act of arranging language in neat horizontal furrows, is a great deal like farming."
The book seemed disjointed at times, and in the end, I found that many of the chapters have been published in journals as stand-alone essays. There are so many interesting stories in here: the story of the dimes Debra found after her father's death, the story of having to haul away the rocks that mysteriously appear every year in the fields, the story of the accident that killed a deer, the story of her grandmother's crazy sister Emma.
I might have never heard about this book if I hadn't been planning a road trip through the Dakotas and gone in search of books to inform my journey. I'm so glad I found this one. I ended up reading most of it after I returned from my trip; while reading I found myself immersed once again in the horizontal land I'd traveled through, marveling at the vast acres of corn, wheat, alfalfa and sunflowers all around me.
Debra seemed desperate at an early age to escape the bondage of endless chores and the expectations that heritage plays in the land. She had no desire to inherit the land, which means to be bound to it forever and ever, passing down through endless generations. She made her escape to tour with a rock band for a year, upending her parents' expectations that she would marry a farmer and become a farm wife. After that phase of her life, she ended up becoming a teacher and writer. She wrote: "And no matter how fiercely I struggled to evade my fate as a farmer's wife, becoming a writer instead, how strange it is to realize that writing, the act of arranging language in neat horizontal furrows, is a great deal like farming."
The book seemed disjointed at times, and in the end, I found that many of the chapters have been published in journals as stand-alone essays. There are so many interesting stories in here: the story of the dimes Debra found after her father's death, the story of having to haul away the rocks that mysteriously appear every year in the fields, the story of the accident that killed a deer, the story of her grandmother's crazy sister Emma.
I might have never heard about this book if I hadn't been planning a road trip through the Dakotas and gone in search of books to inform my journey. I'm so glad I found this one. I ended up reading most of it after I returned from my trip; while reading I found myself immersed once again in the horizontal land I'd traveled through, marveling at the vast acres of corn, wheat, alfalfa and sunflowers all around me.
December 13, 2025
It's hard for me to give an objective review of this book. I'm the same age as the author. I was also the youngest in a large family engaged in crop and livestock farming, grew up in a small farming town in North Dakota, had a father who frequently lost his temper at farm equipment or "getting stuck", and couldn't wait to see ND in my rearview mirror. Although for me as a boy growing up there some things that are fundamentally different between us. Some of that the author mentions most in terms of expectations of keeping the family farm going. But for me as the youngest of four sons, my destiny was never going to be continuing the farm. Like the author, after many paths taken, I eventually ended up teaching at a major midwestern university but still feel drawn back to the wide open prairies of North Dakota. I'm not a poet and nowhere near the writer she is but I also engage in writing histories of my family. Again, like the author, I'm the grandchild of German immigrants who struggled to make a life on the prairie.
This quote from the book also sums up my grandmother, who cried when she got off the train in ND in 1893.
“From the few words I have to remember my great-grandmother by-"It's all earth and sky" -I can't say whether she lived long enough to feel that sense of belonging or accomplishment. Maybe she knew the place would destroy her.
In Giants in the Earth, Rölvaag's character Per Hansa observes about his wife Beret, "She has never felt at home here in America. There are some people, I know now, who never should emigrate, because, you see, they can't take pleasure in that which is to come--they simply can't see it!"”
To be honest, I am always hesitant to read books/memoirs about ND or rural life. This was worth it and honest about good and bad.
Even if you're not from North Dakota this is a very well written book, the author, as a poet and songwriter as well, really can turn a phrase.
This quote from the book also sums up my grandmother, who cried when she got off the train in ND in 1893.
“From the few words I have to remember my great-grandmother by-"It's all earth and sky" -I can't say whether she lived long enough to feel that sense of belonging or accomplishment. Maybe she knew the place would destroy her.
In Giants in the Earth, Rölvaag's character Per Hansa observes about his wife Beret, "She has never felt at home here in America. There are some people, I know now, who never should emigrate, because, you see, they can't take pleasure in that which is to come--they simply can't see it!"”
To be honest, I am always hesitant to read books/memoirs about ND or rural life. This was worth it and honest about good and bad.
Even if you're not from North Dakota this is a very well written book, the author, as a poet and songwriter as well, really can turn a phrase.
September 13, 2019
I loved the blend of memoir, geology, history, and imagination in Marquart's moving hommage to her father, their family farm, and the entire state of North Dakota.
I picked this up because I was traveling to ND and I generally like to read books written by people from the area or written about the land itself. 'The Horizontal World' nicely encapsulates both, with enough poetic license to me make me nostalgic for the days of my own turbulent youth. Who hasn't wished for escape, shaken a fist and cursed the sky, or equally dramatic acts of youthful angst.
Above all, it is a tribute to the ties that bind us to the land and each other, and the strange and glorious manifestations of love contained therein.
I picked this up because I was traveling to ND and I generally like to read books written by people from the area or written about the land itself. 'The Horizontal World' nicely encapsulates both, with enough poetic license to me make me nostalgic for the days of my own turbulent youth. Who hasn't wished for escape, shaken a fist and cursed the sky, or equally dramatic acts of youthful angst.
Above all, it is a tribute to the ties that bind us to the land and each other, and the strange and glorious manifestations of love contained therein.
September 26, 2017
Debra Marquart's humorous and tender and sometimes alarming partial memoir about growing up in rural North Dakota, and all the baggage (and longing) that occurred during her formative years. She couldn't wait to escape but keeps coming back. A poignant portrait of "home" for someone who has spent most of her adult life in other places, but is still rooted on her family's land.
November 22, 2020
At least one really incredible chapter, but also one of the worst lines I've ever read in a book. That line and some other scenes really dropped my overall rating. It was almost as though you could see the different places she'd published some of these chapters previously had better editors. I was almost sad, because I think it had the potential to be really great, but fell short.
November 22, 2020
At least one really incredible chapter, but also one of the worst lines I've ever read in a book. That line and some other scenes really dropped my overall rating. It was almost as though you could see the different places she'd published some of these chapters previously had better editors. I was almost sad, because I think it had the potential to be really great, but fell short.
August 20, 2021
North Dakota where the author was born and raised is very similar to southern saskatchewan where I was born and raised. I liked her descritions of the horizontal world, the farming community and how it is always "home" regardless of how many years one has lived elsewhere.
March 31, 2023
Marquart is the Iowa Poet Laureate who is a farm girl from North Dakota. Her memoir is interesting (especially to this city girl) and I enjoyed getting to know more about this woman whose poetry I really like. Check out both this memoir & her poetry!
May 31, 2019
Beautiful writing; poetic, amusing and heartfelt. I loved it from beginning to end! And look forward to reading more of Debra Marquart’s work.
March 17, 2025
A strong plain voice that resonates as one with those who grew up Midwest.
July 6, 2010
I suppose, for those who didn't grow up in this kind of rurality, Marquart's childhood world seems almost exotic and astonishing. Even so, the author owes us more insight and better metaphors than the juxtaposition of a flaming grain silo with her quest to lose her virginity (sound of ringing gong here). I still have a little more than half the book to go and have so far been unimpressed, or better yet I find her book notable for it's volume of chaff. I expected more from "the Director of the Iowa Writer's Workshop;" thus I am reduced to wondering if the entire book is supposed to mirror the bleak struggle for identity in the almost-infinite flatlands of the author's youth, effected by wearing the reader down glacially to a bone-numbing yawn of "why am I still reading this?" By evoking such utter boredom the author may be successfully relaying the sense of growing up in the middle of nowhere... but on behalf of everyone else who grew up in their own middle of nowhere our formative years were not as unexciting as the author's own adolescence. Notable things happen in the middle of nowhere, even if no one else is around to see them. I had hoped to see some of the deep insight and personal reflection that can be gained only by existing on the periphery of civilization in this book... yet found none. I sense this "memoir" is much closer to a deliberately poor fiction than the author lets on and everyone... author, reader, and subject... everyone suffers as a result. To those who disagree, I would invite them to consider the works of Faulkner (where monumental struggles take place in the middle of nowhere), or if a non-fiction writer is required I would suggest Rick Bragg, an author who gets into the pain, the motives, and the historical perspective of his subjects. Bragg brings his childhood, and it's context within the generations of his family, to life; Marquart tries but falls miserably short.
July 25, 2010
I not being from an farming background found this book fascinating. Living in Iowa and watching the growing seasons for some twenty years now and hearing of the glacier fields and rocks that keep coming to the surface, and the century farms around my house made this book all the more enjoyable.
My daughter asked me to read it, and the references about going shopping and the child having one view on fashion and the mom having an economic view was identifiable. Watching Lawrence Welk on Saturday nights when I was a child as the author did, or sharing that experience with my kids, years later with the reruns, very identifiable.
It is a bitter sweet story about wanting more from life than where you are from, but not wanting to lose that familiarity of home.
The parent-child dynamic as a young one and as a grown adult. It is a good story even though the author sometimes became cutesy with her phasing. (Repeat and repeat again because oh my that sounded good, once or twice would have sufficed.)
When overlooking the phrasing thing, I really liked the book.
My daughter asked me to read it, and the references about going shopping and the child having one view on fashion and the mom having an economic view was identifiable. Watching Lawrence Welk on Saturday nights when I was a child as the author did, or sharing that experience with my kids, years later with the reruns, very identifiable.
It is a bitter sweet story about wanting more from life than where you are from, but not wanting to lose that familiarity of home.
The parent-child dynamic as a young one and as a grown adult. It is a good story even though the author sometimes became cutesy with her phasing. (Repeat and repeat again because oh my that sounded good, once or twice would have sufficed.)
When overlooking the phrasing thing, I really liked the book.
May 26, 2013
Even though the author did not respond to a "fan email" I sent her with a request to meet with her while I was at Iowa State visiting my alma mater where she teaches, I LOVED this memoir. Loved it so much I wrote a critical essay about it for my MFA program. Here's a bit of what I wrote:
From the moment I began reading The Horizontal World: Growing Up Wild in the Middle of Nowhere by Debra Marquart, I recognized it as the sort of book I would devour and one I want to write. The Horizontal World is visually descriptive, takes me inside the head and emotions of the author, and is a story in which I see myself.
The Horizontal World is a stunningly vivid and eloquent memoir about a woman who grew up on an ancestral farm in rural North Dakota, and the emotional price she paid for following her dreams and fleeing her family roots, and the strain her exodus placed on her relationship with her parents.
This, for me, was a great read!
From the moment I began reading The Horizontal World: Growing Up Wild in the Middle of Nowhere by Debra Marquart, I recognized it as the sort of book I would devour and one I want to write. The Horizontal World is visually descriptive, takes me inside the head and emotions of the author, and is a story in which I see myself.
The Horizontal World is a stunningly vivid and eloquent memoir about a woman who grew up on an ancestral farm in rural North Dakota, and the emotional price she paid for following her dreams and fleeing her family roots, and the strain her exodus placed on her relationship with her parents.
This, for me, was a great read!
March 10, 2012
As she grew up, Debra Marquart couldn't wait until she'd be old enough to leave the family farm in North Dakota, and all the hard work it required. She didn't know exactly what she wanted, but she knew she didn't want to be a farmer's wife...and yet, although she became a musician, traveling across country with one rock band after another, eventually completing her education, going to grad school, and today working at Iowa State in Ames, she's unable to leave that dry, dusty ND land behind. This was a fascinating memoir of a life so very different from that of anyone I know...not a life I'd want for myself, nor did I admire all of Marquart's life experience, but a lovely piece of writing. Two of her published works are books of poetry, and her poet's facility with language shows in The Horizontal World.
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